Olivia Wilde said in a new interview with The Cut that a “screaming match” never took place on the set of “Don’t Worry Darling,” nor was she “not available on set” as highly-publicized rumors suggested at the time. Wilde’s 2022 psychological thriller, headlined by Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, descended into tabloid chaos amid rampant speculation over an apparent feud between Pugh and Wilde, plus the romance between Wilde and Styles that allegedly originated during production.
Vulture reported just ahead of the film’s theatrical rollout in Sept. 2022 that a “blowout argument” between Pugh and Wilde occurred about three-quarters of the way through production on “Don’t Worry Darling.” Pugh had allegedly grown “fed up with the director’s frequent unexplained absences,” citing that Wilde and Styles would disappear together from the set amid their burgeoning romance. Pugh allegedly made contact with New Line Cinema’s then-chairman Toby Emmerich to ensure that she would not have to “participate in the film’s life cycle in any way.”
“I’ve never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set. I wanted to be like, ‘None of this is true,’” Wilde now told The Cut, noting that the studio and others involved in the movie demanded she stay quiet on all the alleged drama. “I was told, ‘Don’t say a fucking word. Just go out there and smile.’ I resent that, but it taught me it’s not the way I want to handle things.”
Summarizing this tumultuous period of her career, Wilde turned to advice Jennifer Garner once gave her more than a decade ago: “She said it’s like you get cast in a soap opera by the public. And they assign you an obvious archetype: the damsel in distress, the good girl, the pretty girl. I became the full-on villain. Like Cruella.”
Wilde previously expressed on “Call Her Daddy” regret over staying quiet during the “Don’t Worry Darling” press fiasco.
“I never felt more disconnected from the person that people were talking about. It was also very strange to see complete fiction traded as fact,” Wilde said. “I wanted to be like, ‘Can I just talk to people?’ Can I just go and say like, ‘That’s not true?’ And it was like, ‘No, that won’t help.’ And that was really hard… I felt I was working on behalf of hundreds of people [who worked on this movie]. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t defend myself but it was not about [me]… I think that my own attempt to be strong and to kind of like rise above it in a way came off as inauthentic.”
Wilde was fiercely defended by her crew during the rampant rumors of unprofessionalism on the “Don’t Worry Darling” set. A group of 40 crew members that worked on the movie issued a joint statement in support of Wilde after Vulture’s report of a screaming match between the director and Pugh.
The crew, including producer Katie Silberman, cinematographer Matthew Libatique and costume designer Arianne Phillips, denied such an incident ever took place and praised Wilde as “an incredible leader and director who was present and involved with every aspect of production.” They stressed that “allegations about unprofessional behavior on the set of ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ are completely false.”
“As a crew, we’ve avoided addressing the absurd gossip surrounding the movie we’re so proud of, but feel the need to correct the anonymous ‘sources’ quoted in a recent article,” the statement read. “There was never a screaming match between our director and anyone, let alone a member of our cast.”
“We are happy to put our names on this, as real people who worked on the film, and who have witnessed and benefitted from the collaborative and safe space Olivia creates as a director and leader,” the crew’s statement added.
