Don’t Worry Darling Drama: The Lead Up & The Venice Film Festival
Don’t Worry Darling, a psychological thriller, recently broke the internet for all the wrong reasons. The film is directed by Olivia Wilde, an American actress and filmmaker, and stars Florence Pugh, Chris Pine, Harry Styles, Gemma Chan, and Nick Kroll. Pugh stars as Alice, who lives in the idealized 1950s community of Victory, an experimental company town that houses the men who work on a top-secret project. The film attempts to place us in Alice’s mind as she finds cracks in her idyllic life and seemingly perfect husband, Jack, who is played by Harry Styles.
Jason Sudeikis-Olivia Wilde-Harry Styles
From the beginning, almost everything I learned about this film was against my will. I initially had no idea what the plot was about until I wrote this. Now, from alleged behind the scenes drama, snubs, and Shia LaBeouf, I know far too much. Let’s start at the beginning. Since its conception, the production has been mired in controversy. Olivie Wilde split from her partner, Jason Sudeikis, in the beginning of filming and started dating Harry Styles, the co-lead at the time (we’ll get to this in a minute). It’s rumored that the two may have had an affair on set, which would explain why Wilde was served with custody papers by Sudeikis at a promotional event for the movie, publicly and onstage. Sudeikis maintains that he did not mean for it to be public though Wilde doesn’t seem to buy this, calling it an “outrageous legal tactic.” The two split allegedly amicably in November of 2020 and Wilde was photographed with Styles in January 2021 at a wedding but it is unclear when the relationship began. Styles and Wilde went from having “one-on-one down time” to having “grown closer as a couple.” At the end of the year, Wilde said that she was living her best life.
Florence Pugh
Speculation that Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh had a falling out on set led to lots of press coverage on the film. Although Pugh generally keeps a low profile, she is one of the biggest names attached to the project. As a result, Pugh attracted a lot of attention because she barely promoted the film. According to her management, it’s because she was busy filming Dune: Part Two, which created scheduling conflicts. Unofficially, Pugh hasn’t been promoting the film because of her falling out with Wilde.
Pugh was initially effervescent about the film calling Wilde her “idol” when posting about being cast. “@oliviawilde just tagged me in a picture *gasp no.1* @oliviawilde casted me in a film *gasp no.2* @oliviawilde is my idol and allowed me to be a part of this fecking incredible cast. Shia?!? Chris?!? *gasp no.3*.”
Despite the initial excitement, fans noticed that she did the minimum of hyping the film up post filming— the few times she did, the post was bare and simply captioned with “‘Not everyone gets this opportunity…’ Not long now! Only in theatres September 23rd,” with none of the earlier excitement. Pugh posted a thank-you post in February of 2021, when filming wrapped, mentioning crew but excluding Wilde. Additionally, when Wilde praised Pugh on Instagram, there was no reciprocation.
Evidence of a rift also came to light when it came to her co-star, who was once casted to be Shia LaBeouf. However, he was then accused by his former partner, FKA Twigs, of sexual battery, assault, and infliction of emotional distress, among other things. LaBeouf has a history of legal trouble, being charged with misdemeanor, battery, and petty theft in 2020 and disorderly conduct charges multiple times. A 2015 video of an argument between LaBeouf and his then-girlfriend Mia Goth shows him telling her, “This is the kind of thing that makes a person abusive.” After the argument, LaBeouf can be seen saying, “If I'd have stayed there, I would've killed her.” Due to this, Wilde claimed that she fired LaBeouf to create a safe environment. He was replaced with Harry Styles in September, one month before Wilde and Sudeikis split.
Recently, LaBeouf shared screenshots of text messages and a video with Variety that he claims are proof that he quit and that Wilde begged him to stay. Variety wrote that, in the video, Wilde apparently alluded to him not getting along with Pugh and seemed to take his side. Allegedly, Wilde said “I feel like I’m not ready to give up on this yet, and I, too, am heartbroken and I want to figure this out. You know, I think this might be a bit of a wake-up call for Miss Flo, and I want to know if you’re open to giving this a shot with me, with us. If she really commits, if she really puts her mind and heart into it at this point and if you guys can make peace — and I respect your point of view, I respect hers — but if you guys can do it, what do you think? Is there hope? Will you let me know?”
After the screenshots and video came out, Pugh announced that she would be skipping the Don’t Worry Darling premiere press conference.
The Venice Film Festival
Alright, here’s when we get into the good stuff. I have never cared about any film festival before, but this year, I was refreshing Tiktok and Twitter every few minutes to hear about the scandal. Though fans think that Pugh planned to skip the press conference and introductory photo call due to the leaked video of Wilde calling LaBeouf, officially, she was supposed to land after the press conference due to her filming schedule of Dune: Part Two. Yet, Timothée Chalamet, the lead of Dune, was able to attend all his press obligations at the Venice Film Festival, including the press conference and photo call, to promote his own project. At the press conference, Wilde insisted that she was indifferent to the drama and told the press that “Florence is a force, and we are so grateful that she is able to make it tonight despite being in production on Dune. I know as a director how disruptive it is to lose an actor even for a day so I’m very grateful to her and Denis Villeneuve for helping us—we’re really thrilled we’ll get to celebrate her work tonight.” She continued to praise Pugh while refusing the comment on the internet drama, stating that “the internet feeds itself.” She also refused to answer any questions about LaBeouf.
Meanwhile, Styles vaguely talked to the press about how he felt about the movie: “You know, my favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie. It feels like a real, like, you know, ‘go to the theater’ film movie.” Instead of backtracking, he decided to go further and discuss his acting process, saying that “what I like about acting is I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.” He also said the best thing about acting was “playing pretend.” His full quote is “This world is supposedly so perfect; it was fun to play pretend in it. It’s like driving fun cars. A lot of fun stuff as well.” Truly, this paragraph was almost entirely unnecessary to this article but I needed all of you to suffer reading that like I did. I’m no Harry Styles hater, but this is questionable at best. As Wilde and Styles performed for the press, Chris Pine seems to be hoping that he was anywhere else. According to Variety Fair, Pine’s stoic facial expressions were compared to those of The Hunger Games’ Haymitch Abernathy and as “astral projecting.”
Hey, remember when the whole reason Pugh was skipping the conference was that she had scheduling conflicts and wouldn’t land till after the press conference was over? Well, she was spotted in Venice about five minutes after Wilde was asked about Pugh’s attendance. Stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray, who works with Pugh, posted an Instagram video of Pugh on a Venice sidewalk golding an Aperol spritz as the press confidence finished. After the festival, Corbin-Murray also posted images of Pugh on her Instagram captioned “Miss Flo,” seemingly throwing shade at Wilde.
The stars, including Pugh, gathered on the red carpet. Pugh posed alongside her cast for a group shot, but aside from that one photo, the trio of Wilde, Pugh, and Styles were separated on the red carpet, instead each was surrounded by their reps or by other actors. Pugh was not the only one staying away from Wilde however, Styles and Wilde never posed together or next to each other on the carpet and the showing and arrived separately. By contrast, Gemma Chan and Pugh embraced and Pine enthusiastically snapped photos of Pugh with his disposable camera.
The end of the night: the showing. Inside the theater, the seemingly strategic cast placement continued. Wilde and Pugh were three seats apart while Pine acted as a buffer between Wilde and Styles. More importantly, there were rumors that Styles allegedly spit on Pine when taking his seat, which were refuted by both stars’ teams. While this was initially believed due to the way that Pine looked at his lap in surprise after Styles took his seat, many have pointed out that he could have been looking at his sunglasses and the two seemed to share conversation after the fact, making this allegation quite unlikely. Next, the Venice Film Festival is known for long standing ovations with some films receiving ten and 20 minute ovations. By contrast, Don’t Worry Darling received four before Pugh left, effectively ending it. According to Variety editor Ramin Setoodeh, Pugh did not make eye contact with Wilde during the four-minute standing ovation for the movie.
As a cherry on top, Wilde’s and Styles’s strange behavior already prompted breakup rumors as they were never photographed together, similar to Pugh and Wilde, which is a very odd thing to do as they are (allegedly) still dating. Rumors only got worse after the showing when Styles kissed Nick Kroll on the mouth, which many fans contrasted to his behavior around Wilde. Whether Styles and Wilde are together or not, the two are packing on the PDA in recent weeks following split rumors from the film festival.
It’s been a while since any movie had this kind of media frenzy around it and if we’re being honest, a psychological thriller, even when starring Harry Styles, would not have attracted this much attention. However, fueled by the behind-the-scenes drama, people wrote, read, tweeted and made TikToks about it. Remarkably, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the backstage drama, the movie debuted at number one in the United States, making over $30 million globally on its opening weekend. Looks like the saying “any press is good press” proved true.
by ATREYI BASU