Olivia Wilde has responded to reports that she and Florence Pugh had a “screaming match” during the making of Don’t Worry Darling.
The psychological thriller followed a married couple in what appeared to be a perfect community, only for them to realise that something was seriously wrong beneath the surface.
Although the film itself was packed with drama, much of the public attention around it focused on rumours of behind-the-scenes tension involving members of the cast.
According to sources who spoke to Vulture, Wilde and Pugh were said to have clashed over Wilde’s “frequent, unexplained absences,” with one claim alleging that “Olivia and Harry would just disappear.”
Those reports emerged after widespread speculation about Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles.
Wilde has denied suggestions of any feud on multiple occasions. During the Venice Film Festival, she said: “Florence is a force.
“As for all the endless tabloid gossip and all the noise out there, I mean, the internet feeds itself,” she added. “I don’t feel the need to contribute. I think it’s sufficiently well-nourished.”
Now, nearly four years after the film’s release, Wilde has again rejected the suggestion that there was a fallout between her and Pugh.
“I’ve never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set,” she told The Cut. “I wanted to be like, ‘None of this is true.’”
She also said she had wanted to push back publicly at the time, but was advised by her representatives to let the claims pass without comment.
In the same recent run of interviews, Wilde also reflected on the wider scrutiny surrounding Don’t Worry Darling, including the reaction to her relationship with Styles and the way the film’s press cycle was consumed by rumours rather than the movie itself. On Call Her Daddy, she described the romance as “so sweet and so beautiful” and said the public reaction to it was intense and unexpected.
Wilde additionally reflected on her two-year romance with Styles, who ultimately took over the role after LaBeouf exited the project, describing the relationship as ‘loving and wonderful and joyful’ despite their split in late 2022.
She said the attention surrounding both the relationship and the film ‘robbed me of my naïveté for sure’, before adding: “I deeply hate the feeling of being misunderstood, too.”
The film’s promotional run remains one of the most talked-about in recent years, though Pugh has made clear she has little interest in revisiting that chapter during interviews.
In an interview with British Vogue in 2024, Pugh said: “There’s so many times when I’ve been doing press for a movie and I am asked questions about [Don’t Worry Darling], and I always think it’s unfair to take the space away from the movie that I’m talking about.”
“So I’m going to politely move away from that.”