For weeks, celebrity gossip about Olivia Wilde and her sophomore directorial project, Don’t Worry Darling, has flooded social media.
People have a laundry list of complaints. Some have “investigated” whether she cheated on ex Jason Sudeikis with her beau Harry Styles, and pitted her against the star of the film, Florence Pugh. Others claimed that Pugh felt ignored on set by Wilde, who instead was distracted by Styles. There are also rumors that Wilde mishandled Shia LaBeouf’s departure from the film, and that Pugh has tried to distance herself from the attention the movie’s sex scenes have garnered.
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Now, rabbit holes abound: Headlines speculate that Styles and Wilde have split, while countless videos on social media dissect interactions between Wilde and her cast. Did Pugh and Wilde avoid each other at the film’s Venice premiere? Why weren’t Wilde and Styles sitting next to each other? And bizarrely, did Styles spit on Chris Pine?
The gossip amounts to a tangled hot mess of memes that are hard to follow and force yet another woman in Hollywood to bear the brunt of sexist double standards. And—because of course—the far-right is involved too.
Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog, told VICE News in an email that it tracked posts about Wilde and found that since August 23, posts about Wilde and related topics on right-leaning Facebook pages have generated the most interactions. “Right-leaning pages have posted over 300 times about Wilde and the movie, earning over 200,000 interactions,” Media Matters said.
Right-wing sites include The Daily Wire, Breitbart, and social media platforms like Gab, Rumble, and Telegram. Terms like “commie whore,” “Hollywood harlot,” and “bimbo” have been used to describe Wilde.
And while 200,000 interactions may not seem like a lot, “right-wing outlets like The Daily Wire appear to be exploiting this situation to get more engagement on social media,” said Pam Vogel, a senior adviser with Media Matters. “We’ve observed that right-wing media, really all media, are eager for the downfall of women who are outspoken on progressive issues.”
Experts say the way Wilde is being dragged and taunted is somewhat reminiscent of the hateful social media treatment Amber Heard received during the multimillion defamation trial between her and ex-husband Johnny Depp.
VICE News previously reported how Heard suffered countless death threats and other attacks throughout the trial, with one Twitter analytics firm saying the hate amounted to “one of the worst cases of platform manipulation and flagrant abuse from a group of Twitter accounts.” VICE World News also uncovered that The Daily Wire spent thousands of dollars promoting anti-Heard content.
Both Wilde and Heard have also been outspoken about progressive issues, so “people who don’t agree are quick to point out hypocrisy” when the opportunity presents itself, Vogel said. “And they’re conventionally attractive younger women who are well known.”
But even beyond the far-right corners of the internet, people are still disparaging Wilde.
When comedian John Mulaney announced the end of his marriage and then shortly after announced his relationship with Olivia Munn (who he now has a child with), he didn’t receive nearly as much backlash as Wilde, said Jaclyn Friedman, a feminist writer and founder of EducateUS, a group dedicated to improving sex education in the U.S.
“Olivia Wilde has done—as far as I can tell—certainly nothing worse than John Mulaney did, but it’s not the same outpour of support,” Friedman said. “With John, everyone came to his defense… This is all just reduced to a catfight, basically.”
It’s easy to strike up a list of problematic men in Hollywood who enjoyed success long after their transgressions were outed. To name a few: Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Alfred Hitchcock.
“I don’t know what went down on that set. Maybe Wilde didn’t do everything in an ideal way… But I also think about legendary directors like Hitchcock who were horrible to women in their movies—and it barely gets mentioned—and they’re lionized as great auteurs,” added Friedman.
And sure—there are probably issues within the Don’t Worry Darling saga worthy of constructive critique. LaBeouf alleges that Wilde misled people by implying she fired LaBeouf from the movie, who was slated to play the male lead before he was replaced by Styles. Wilde implied that her decision to remove LaBeouf was in deference to Pugh.
But, last month, a video of Wilde seemingly asking LaBeouf to stick with the project surfaced, resulting in speculation that Wilde tried to keep LaBeouf in the film despite Pugh’s alleged discomfort with him.
Wilde has maintained that she prioritized Pugh’s well-being and let LaBeouf go. “My responsibility was towards her. I’m like a mother wolf. Making the call was tricky, but in a way he understood,” Wilde told Vanity Fair. “I don’t think it would’ve been a process he enjoyed. He comes at his work with an intensity that can be combative. It wasn’t the ethos that I demand in my productions.”
Shortly after LaBeouf left Wilde’s project, his ex FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against him, and accused him of strangulation, knowingly infecting her with an STI, and other violent attacks. It’s unclear whether the allegations had any impact on his role in Wilde’s movie, but the timing does open the door for conversations around what actors should be hired—and when they should be fired.
“I would be here for a serious discourse for the Shia LaBeouf of it all,” said Friedman. “What’s a director’s responsibility to a leading lady who is asked to act opposite a man with serious allegations against him?”
Those of us who weren’t on set will likely never know the full truth, but that hasn’t stopped People On The Internet from pitting Wilde and Pugh against each other with fervor—a cliché that’s been haunting women forever. “It’s no coincidence that it’s an older woman versus a younger woman,” said Friedman.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Studies show society has a problem with successful women in ways it doesn’t with successful men, so it (unfortunately) checks out that people are faster to take down Wilde than her male counterparts. “We, as a culture, are fundamentally uncomfortable with women in power—and that’s understating it,” Friedman said.
Think pieces and tabloids have dissected Wilde’s and Pugh’s Instagram accounts in attempts to determine whether the celebrities have had a falling out. They’ve speculated that Pugh hasn’t promoted the film much on her account, tried to put together timelines that suggest Pugh is avoiding press conferences, and have even dug deep into Pugh’s stylist’s account for more hints into the rumored drama.
“I don’t want to come off like, ‘Oh, Olivia Wilde can do no wrong’—I don’t think that’s the corrective,” Friedman added. “I just don’t think the way discourse is going down is illustrative of how it doesn’t go down with men.”
