Olivia Wilde ‘Never Felt More Disconnected’ Than During the ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Media Storm

During the storm of rumors and apparent controversy that surrounded the 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde had the urge to step in and set the record straight, but ultimately decided against it, the director shared on Call Her Daddy. “I wanted to be like, ‘Can I just talk to people?’” Wilde said. “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.” Without intervention, the speculation got a little out of hand at times.

At one point during the press cycle, when the cast appeared at the Venice Film Festival, the question of whether Wilde’s then-boyfriend, Harry Styles, spat on his co-star, Chris Pine, became the biggest story surrounding the movie. That same night, Don’t Worry Darling‘s leading lady Florence Pugh showed up for the screening, but didn’t pose for photos with or even look at Wilde while she was there. Just a few months prior, Wilde’s presentation at CinemaCon went viral when she was reportedly served with custody papers while she was onstage presenting new footage from Don’t Worry Darling.

“There was all this public madness, but my private life was very far from it,” Wilde said. “And very, actually kind of wholesome and sweet. I had a lot of like real joy and love and happiness during that time. It was like the tornado was right outside the door and if you were inside, you were like, ‘It’s so nice,’ and then you’d open the door and a fucking like cow and a tractor would fly by.” The director added that she “never felt more disconnected from the person that people were talking about,” saying, “It was also very strange to see complete fiction traded as fact.”

The reviews didn’t help, either. “Olivia Wilde’s fuck you to the patriarchy isn’t quite the flaming car wreck that the film’s P.R. tour was,” Rolling Stone‘s David Fear wrote at the time. “But it also isn’t what you’d call ‘good.'”
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Looking back, Wilde isn’t certain she made the right call on keeping her true thoughts to herself. “I think that my own attempt to be strong and to kind of like rise above it in a way came off as inauthentic,” she said.

Now, Wilde is gearing up to bounce back with The Invite, her first directorial feature since Don’t Worry Darling. The film, out June 26, stars herself alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton. Just over a week from its release, The Invite has not experienced anything equivalent to spitgate or the inner pop fandom drama of its director showing up at Styles’ concerts, so it just might be in the clear.