After weeks of buzz around the new film Don’t Worry Darling, director and actress Olivia Wilde just addressed all of the wild rumors surrounding her film (yep, even spit-gate) when she stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday.
Since filming began, the movie has been entrenched in an unprecedented amount of drama. “It’s kind of ironic because all of this is really what the film’s about,” Wilde told late night host Stephen Colbert. The psychological thriller follows a young married couple, Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) in the 1950s. When Alice begins to unravel, she reveals some disturbing truths about the utopian collective they find themselves apart of. “The film is about the narratives we are fed and whether we choose to accept them or question their sources,” she continued.
With a star-studded ensemble cast featuring Wilde herself, Pugh, Styles, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, and more, it seems no one has gone untouched from the alleged behind-the-scenes tension. The rumor mill began with whispers of a feud between Wilde and her leading lady, Pugh.
“I have nothing but respect for Florence’s talent,” Wilde told Colbert. “She’s fantastic. She’s on the set of her movie Dune right now, and there’s nothing cooler than a busy actress. I have nothing against her for any reason.”
After Colbert pointed out that Pugh was sipping on an Aperol Spritz instead of attending the press conference at the Venice Film Festival, Wilde noted, “I don’t feel like my male directing colleagues are answering questions about their cast.” The comment drew a massive applause from the audience.
The pair dove into the glaring double-standard this gossip has put on display, citing that many male directors have been infamous for their tyrannical sets throughout Hollywood history.
The next rumor Colbert put to bed: Spit-gate. “People will look for drama anywhere they can,” Wild stated. “Harry did not spit on Chris, in fact.” She went on to say, “People can look at a video that shows evidence of someone not spitting on someone else, and they’ll still see what they want to see, and that is the creation of drama. And that is clickbait.”
As if that weren’t enough, another looming rumor hovering above Don’t Worry Darling was Shia LaBeouf’s departure from the film while it was still in production. (He was originally cast as the role of Jack, Styles’ character.) Wilde told Variety that she fired LeBeouf due to her responsibility to “protect” both the production and he cast, namely Pugh. In response, LaBeouf rebutted her claims to the outlet, stating that he “quit” Wilde’s production, and released a voicemail from the director, pleading with him to stay on the project.
“There were private messages that were released without context to try to make a situation look like something that it wasn’t,” Wilde told Colbert. “Early on in the process of making the film, as the director, I tried to mediate a situation between people to try to see if they could work together happily. Once it became clear that it was not a tenable working relationship, I was given an ultimatum. I chose my actress, which I’m very happy I did. At the time, was I bummed that we weren’t able to make it work? Sure. Did information about him come to light later that made me confident we made the right decision? Absolutely.”
In December of 2020, FKA Twigs sued LeBeouf, alleging abuse and sexual battery.
“We had to replace Shia,” said Wilde. “He is a fantastic actor, but it wasn’t going to work. When he gave me the ultimatum of him or Florence, I chose Florence. And that was him feeling like he was stepping away and me feeling like we were moving on without him”
For clarity, Colbert then asked, “So are you saying that he wouldn’t do the movie in the way that you wanted him to, so he had to go? So, he can say he quit, and you can say you fired him, and both of you can think you’re right?”
“Yes.” Wilde recalled, “I said, ‘That’s great, you go and we will move on.’ It wasn’t going to move forward in the way that he wanted it to, and so he had to leave. Everyone, in the end, ended up with what they wanted. He didn’t want to be apart of the production we were making, in the way I like to make productions, and so he moved on, we moved on and replaced him, and ended up with a cast that I’m so proud of in a movie that I’m really thrilled about.”
Don’t Worry Darling hits theaters Sept. 23
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