I’m Worried, Darling:
A Deep Dive into the Drama Behind the Scenes of the Don’t Worry Darling Movie
By: Mallory Johnson
On September 23rd, 2022, the highly awaited (and controversial) movie Don’t Worry Darling hits theatres. The film is directed by Olivia Wilde, who also stars in the film and made her directorial debut with the comedy Booksmart. The cast includes famed musician Harry Styles (Dunkirk, Eternals), Florence Pugh (Little Women, Midsommar), Chris Pine (Star Trek, Wonder Woman), and Gemma Chan (Eternals, Crazy Rich Asians). Most of the plot has been under wraps for a while, but the basic gist that is public knowledge is that it is a horror film that follows a “1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets.” Florence Pugh plays the housewife lead named Alice, and Harry plays her husband named Jack.
The drama began when Harry and Olivia were spotted holding hands at a wedding in January of last year. Olivia was married to Jason Sudeikis, but it was believed that she left Jason for Harry when they met on set for the movie. They were photographed together a lot, on and off set, holding hands in most of the pictures. At CinemaCon in April of this year, a member of Jason’s team served Olivia with custody papers (they have two kids) while she was onstage and humiliated her. Throughout promotion of the movie this summer, lead Florence Pugh was suspiciously quiet about the film on her Instagram account. She is normally loud about the movies she is in, promoting them so her followers know about them. This led fans to speculate that there was a possible feud between Florence and Olivia. To add to the feud rumors, Florence said in an interview that she does not want audiences and interviewers to only focus on the sex scenes in the movie. Olivia marketed the movie with a large focus on the sex scenes, and fans believed Florence’s comments were a direct jab at Olivia.
Originally, Shia LeBeouf was supposed to star in Harry’s role, but he left the movie, citing that he was not given the rehearsal time he needed. Olivia originally claimed that she fired him from the movie because the set environment was uncomfortable due to Shia. Shia is a method actor, which involves actors to be in and always stay in character. His character, Jack, is abusive, and around this time, Shia was accused by his ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs of abuse. So, clearly anyone would be uncomfortable with this. But recently a video came out of Olivia begging Shia to stay on the movie and claiming that this could be a “good wakeup call for ‘Miss Flo.’” This basically caught Olivia in a lie and assured Shia’s claim that he was not fired from the movie and proved that Olivia has some issues with “Miss Flo.”
After this explosive drama, the movie premiered on September 5th at the 79th Venice Film Festival. Florence said that she was limiting press because she was filming the second Dune movie at the time and could not make it. But…she showed up…late. She made her necessary appearances, posed for photographs with the cast (while separated from Harry and Olivia), and then left as soon as she could - cutting a standing ovation short. Harry Styles mishandled Venice Film Festival interviews, saying that “the movie really feels like a movie,” and basically saying that he had no idea what he was doing while filming the movie. The film got a low Metacritic score on Rotten Tomatoes (39% - very worrying). After the screening, Harry shocked fans when he kissed Nick Kroll! They were both laughing about it, and it was clear it was a friendly moment between the two. To top it all off, it was rumoured that Harry spit on Chris Pine’s lap as he was sitting in his seat at the screening. However, Chris’s representatives denied it happened and Harry joked about it at a concert in New York City. Florence also opted out of a Q+A at a New York premiere of the film. In a Venice Q+A (that Florence skipped), a fan tried to ask Olivia a question about the Shia drama, but the moderator shut them down claiming that Olivia had already answered that question (which she had not). The drama ends, for now, with Olivia denying the rumours that she cheated on Jason with Harry. Overall, all the drama surrounding Don’t Worry Darling is very good promo for it – there is no such thing as bad press. I am very excited to see the movie because I am a huge fan of Harry and Florence, review to come.