Olivia Wilde says the backlash around the Don’t Worry Darling press tour was not just loud, but wildly out of scale with what was happening in her life. Speaking Wednesday on Call Her Daddy, she said she felt “so insanely disproportionate” pummeling as rumors swirled around the 2022 rollout.
That is why the interview is landing now. Wilde is revisiting one of the most watched entertainment controversies of the last few years, and she is doing it in her own voice after spending the original rollout trying to keep the movie moving while the gossip machine spun around her. The frenzy touched Harry Styles, Jason Sudeikis and Chris Pine, and it has remained a shorthand for how quickly a film campaign can be swallowed by speculation.
Wilde said she “never felt more disconnected from the person that people were talking about,” describing a gap between the public narrative and her actual life. She said the situation was “very far from” the public madness and was “kind of like wholesome and sweet,” adding that she had “a lot of like real joy and love and happiness during that time.”
Her description is blunt because it cuts against the version of events that followed her everywhere in 2022. During the viral press tour, reports circulated that Sudeikis served divorce papers onstage at CinemaCon, and separate reports claimed Harry Styles spat on Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival premiere. Wilde did not have a clean way to answer any of it while still doing the job of promoting the film. She said it was hard to hear the rumor mill and not say, “that’s not true. That’s not true.” Asked whether she could push back publicly, she said, “No, that won’t help.”
The contradiction is what made the scrutiny sting. Wilde says her private life was full of real warmth while the public story around her was chaotic and punitive, a tornado outside the door while she was still expected to keep smiling inside. That gap is also part of why she is talking more easily about the period now: the noise has passed, but the memory of being unable to defend herself has not.
The conversation also points forward to The Invite, which Wilde both stars in and directs. The film, which follows two couples who convene for dinner, has already drawn extremely positive reviews and landed at A24 in an eight-figure deal after a 72-hour bidding war. For Wilde, the next chapter is less about explaining the past than showing that the work still exists beyond it.
