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Darling you’re worrying the fuck out of me.
The press tour for Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling has been a succession of escalating snafus. But everything is fine, everyone seems to promise, there’s nothing to worry about except everything: Olivia Wilde’s Variety cover, Harry Styles’s Rolling Stone cover, Florence Pugh’s Harper’s Bazaar cover. Can Chris Pine get, like, an Esquire cover? I’m just trying to see something.
Wilde covered the latest issue of Variety; it’s savvy for her to do an entertainment trade instead of a traditional fashion magazine. It drives home her desire to be seen as a director, not an actress who’s decided to make a movie with her boyfriend. (“She’s so golden” the coverline reads. It’s a Harry Styles song reference, which I personally find cringe.)
Wilde rambles about feminism and empowerment and the importance of showing women orgasming onscreen — at one point there’s a “14-minute tangent about how we’re all complicit in a culture that propagates a narrative that women are to be compared with one another, thus holding them back from their full potential and happiness.” (Fourteen minutes, to be clear, is “I’m That Girl” through the end of “Energy.”) She describes being served custody papers from Jason Sudiekis while presenting the movie onstage at CinemaCon as a “sabotage.” Again we get her “no asshole policy” spiel as she talks about firing Shia LaBeouf, who was originally cast in Styles’ role.
But when Wilde raves about Florence Pugh, Pugh passes on returning the favor. “She was really a great supporter of [Harry Styles] as someone who was newer to a film set. And he was such a great supporter of hers, as someone who understood it was her film,” Wilde told Variety. Pugh, though, “declined to be interviewed for this story (her publicist said she’s filming Dune: Part Two in Budapest).” This comes after a moment from Pugh’s Harper’s Bazaar profile that I missed: “When it’s reduced to your sex scenes, or to watch the most famous man in the world go down on someone, it’s not why we do it. It’s not why I’m in this industry,” Pugh said. The sex scenes — and the shot in the trailer of Styles going down on Pugh — are all that Wilde has been talking about.
The rumors of a feud between Pugh and Wilde have been rampant: “Florence Pugh unhappy over Olivia Wilde-Harry Styles affair,” Page Six reported in July. Wilde tells Variety the feud is “invented clickbait.” But the Variety decline, to me, confirms the rumors that I’ve been hearing that there isn’t really a “feud.” A feud requires two people in conflict, a feud is fussing. A feud is a fight. This is the silent treatment; this is a rejection. This is Liza Minelli responding to Judy: “I hope she had a good time making it.” Pugh is pretty online — she’s posted on IG to tell people to shut up about her and her old ex-boyfriend with the ugly apartment, and to respond to the attention her sheer Valentino gown got. Her silence, in Variety and everywhere else, is telling.
Wilde seems to be going above and beyond trying to win back Pugh’s affection. It worked for Ben Affleck: he rekindled Bennifer by randomly praising J.Lo in interviews to get her attention. But Pugh is not a leo, lol. That’s not going to work.
Two days after the Variety interview dropped, Shia LaBeouf reemerged with his own Don’t Worry Darling story. He wasn’t fired from DWD, as Wilde has been saying for over a year. He emailed Variety to say that, actually, he quit: he forwarded the magazine an email he says he sent Wilde discussing the terms of his exit. “I hope this finds you inspired, purposeful, fulfilled & well,” he begins. And then: “What inspired this email today is your latest Variety story. I am greatly honored by your words on my work; thank you, that felt good to read. I am a little confused about the narrative that I was fired, however,” he wrote. “You and I both know the reasons for my exit. I quit your film because your actors & I couldn’t find time to rehearse. I have included as a reminder the screenshots of our text exchange on that day, and my text to Tobey.”
He shares a Mar-A-Lago amount of documents with the magazine: texts, emails, and a video Wilde recorded and sent him addressing his departure:
Stan twitter is trying to cast a hero and a villain, but I don’t think there’s a hero here. (Variety, fwiw, says some sources have said LaBeouf was fired, while others described it as more of a mutual parting of ways.) LaBeouf positions this letter and document leak not as a “gotcha” but as a sort of agonized, as the father of a daughter-y plea. (Not dissimilar from the tone he took with the New York Times.) He has been silent about being sued by FKA Twigs, who has accused him of sexual battery and assault. He brings up Twigs in his letter to Wilde, comparing the situations: with Twigs, he says, he’s “trying to navigate a nuanced situation with respect for her and the truth.” But on the subject of DWD: “this situation with your film and my ‘firing’ will never have a court date with which to deal with the facts.” The comparison alone is a tell. He’s taking advantage of a moment, trying to gain sympathy: He has a movie, Padre Pio, premiering at the Venice fest, too.
Re: Wilde, the pile-on she gets from stans is … a lot. But the “bit of a wake-up call for Miss Flo” … what the fuck happened on this movie?
So what happens next? The movie’s Venice premiere, for starters, and then the onslaught of reviews and then the worldwide opening. This movie needs to go ahead and come out. Release it today, release it right now; I don’t think I can take 28 more days of the worrying, darling.
What Paying Subscribers Got This Week
Rita Wilson in Gloria Bell is at the top of the list.
27 Dresses
Fourth marriage, two weddings, and five dresses: Jennifer Lopez’s latest OnTheJLo dispatch covers Bennifer’s wedding celebration at Affleck's imitation plantation in Savannah, Georgia. “The dresses were dreamy... thank you Ralph Lauren 🤍” Lopez captioned. All three dresses are, let’s say, very J.Lo: Costume-y and hilariously over the top (one had a 20 foot train!). She is, of course, wearing a glossy nude lip with each.
In one photo, she is draped with pearls … sitting on a swing … in a barn … lit by candle chandeliers? I really don’t know how else to describe it other than this would’ve killed on Blake Lively’s now-defunct antebellum Goop blog back in the day:
Attendees wore white at the wedding — only cool when Solange did it — but a few big names were notably absent. Jennifer Garner was busy shopping at Sam’s Club. J.Lo BFF Leah Remini was getting her kid ready to leave for college. Casey Affleck had “other things” to do, which means: J.Lo was not about to have his 24-year-old girlfriend in her wedding pics.
Also: Affleck gave GQ an exclusive photo of his tuxedo, which is just so … we need congressional legislation barring leos from marrying one another.
Virgo’s Move
And one more thing about J.Lo, a leo: Virgos need not apply!
Uncle Drake
He plays too damn much:
Not the Barry White jheri curl! He is one pair of grilling sandals, two ex-wives, a get rich quick scheme, and a cracked Android screen with a Facebook meme about “women nagging” away from being an uncle.
28 Days of Renaissance
In the month since Renaissance’s release every song has gone diamond in my home, except for “All Up In Your Mind,” which has only gone platinum, and “Break My Soul,” which has gone gold and only begrudgingly.
But Renaissance-heads, you have to see this because it’s too good:
ATwenty-War
Vulture’s Nate Jones ranked every A24 movie and before you have any emotional reaction whatsoever consider that: the point of every ranking is to start fights, and I will not be engaging! Lady Bird, Moonlight, and 20th Century Women are exactly where they should be (Gems too, although Good Time is too low but I digress) so I’ll see yall later 😎
Once I saw American Honey ranked above Everything Everywhere All At Once … a genuine, guttural laugh. No notes. Spring Breakers is way too low, though.
That’s all this week. Thank you for reading! This weekend I will be at a wedding so I will not have time to watch movies but if I did have time to watch movies, I would be finishing the Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward doc.
hello the Olivia Wilde video??? is that a thing people do?? Send videos instead of typing out a text? Or a voice memo? if I opened a text thread to see a video I would consider it a jump scare
That letter is borderline DARVO. He basically calls Twigs a liar (his reference to “the truth” and court is terrible). Great way to kick off his redemption tour, dunking on a widely disliked woman.