Olivia Wilde Recalls ‘Hurtful’ Media Storm Around Don’t Worry Darling

Olivia Wilde has opened up about the media frenzy that surrounded the release of her 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling.

Directed by Olivia and starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as its leads, Don’t Worry Darling’s cinematic release was blighted by reports of behind-the-scenes chaos.

All the while, Olivia was dealing with a very public split from her ex-husband Jason Sudeikis, and scrutiny over her then-relationship with the As It Was singer.

By the film’s release, it had been panned by critics, but there was still time for one last drama, over a bizarre online rumour that Harry had spit on co-star Chris Pine as they took their seats to watch Don’t Worry Darling at the Venice Film Festival.

As you can imagine, Olivia has now admitted that the plagued release of Don’t Worry Darling gave her cause for concern when it came to promoting her latest movie, The Invite.

Speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Olivia voiced her opinion that the furore around Don’t Worry Darling’s release “did hurt the film for sure” because “we didn’t get to have the conversations about what the film was trying to say, which was a shame because so many people worked so hard to make that film in the depths of Covid”.

Praising the work of those who worked on Don’t Worry Darling in “uncertain times”, she continued: “But we never got to talk about that, so I think it hurt the film.

“It hurt me for sure, because I was so naive up until that point about the grinder, the garbage disposal that the internet can be.

“So, at this point, I have enough of a perspective on it, and that allows me to experience it as a fascinating time. It is interesting to witness a tornado from the inside. But now I look back and I think, ‘oh, the people were being given headlines without context, and it’s a natural instinct to start trying to fill those in’.”

Olivia continued: “It’s interesting because this is my first time back into the press cycle since then and I did wonder, ‘would this feel quite traumatising?’.”

Fortunately, she shared that the “conversations” she’s been having while promoting The Invite have been “so wonderfully interesting to me” that it’s “been actually kind of healing because I understand that it’s not always a garbage disposal”.

As well as directing The Invite, Olivia stars in it alongside Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, as two couples during a dinner party whose evening spirals out of control into unexpected places.

Unlike Don’t Worry Darling, the domestic drama has received rave reviews from critics and viewers, and currently holds a critical score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and a Letterboxd rating of 4.1 stars.

Last month, Olivia told New York magazine that the producers behind Don’t Worry Darling had encouraged her not to address any of the headlines around it, which she now has mixed feelings on.

“I was told, ‘Don’t say a fucking word. Just go out there and smile’,” she said. “I resent that, but it taught me it’s not the way I want to handle things.”

She also told the podcast Call Her Daddy: “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.”

“There was all this public madness, but my private life was very far from it,” she claimed, recalling how it felt “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”.

“I’ve never felt more disconnected from the person that people were talking about,” she concluded. “It was also very strange to see complete fiction traded as fact.”

Listen to Olivia Wilde’s full interview on The Louis Theroux Podcast here.