Olivia Wilde accepts people can't move on from the Don't Worry Darling drama

It’s a far cry from the iffy energy that derailed the press tour for her previous directorial effort, Don’t Worry Darling—a topic that obsessed gossip-mongers and celebrity fans in 2022, a year the filmmaker and actor considers a low point in her life and career. Yet she still can’t seem to shake this rocky period, even as good fortune keeps coming her way. In October, she fielded questions about her experience with the film, which co-starred Harry Styles, Chris Pine, and Florence Pugh, and said she was told to “just go out there and smile” during promotion, even though she felt some of the stories about the film’s production, including an alleged row between her and Pugh and one between Pine and Styles, were untrue. Now, in a new interview with The New York Times‘ David Marchese, Wilde is being asked to sift through the Darling fallout once more to suss out why people remain so fascinated by it. “I didn’t blame people for feeling curious about what became this media storm around that movie,” she said. “When there’s a lack of information, people fill the void with assumptions. Some of it has to do with the way the media talks about women, but I think it’s broader than that.”

Wilde is careful not to discuss any behind-the-scenes goings-on from Darling, good or bad. Instead, she extends an open hand to gossips who can’t help but invest themselves in any perception of drama, especially when it concerns the rich and famous. She calls the public interest in the cast’s private affairs “disproportionate,” but she understands the energy the press and public put into it. “Because there was something kind of titillating and mysterious about what people felt they knew about that movie and everything around it, they created a narrative that was so far from the truth. And every story needs a villain. I was cast as said villain,” she said. “It’s something I don’t have any rage about. I think it took me a few years of zooming out and thinking about lots of other things to realize, Oh, that really had very little to do with me. I also grew a lot from it. I’m a very different person now. Anything that forces you to do a bunch of therapy and think deeply and read a bunch of books and travel—anything that throws you off is actually potentially very, very good for you.” 

In a display of good humor (not to mention good taste), Wilde went on to compare working in the film industry to a scene in Galaxy Quest in which Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen point out the absurdity of their situation. “It’s funny, sometimes this business reminds me of the scene in Galaxy Quest when Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen are running down that tunnel on the spaceship with all the big slicers. And Sigourney Weaver’s character just goes, ‘This is a terribly written episode.’ Sometimes this business feels like a terribly written episode. But then, you know, that episode ends. It was just for sweeps week.”