Florence Pugh won’t discuss Harry Styles sex scenes in ‘Don’t Worry Darling’
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Credit: YouTube
Olivia Wilde denies Harry Styles made “three times more” than Florence Pugh
In a recent interview with Variety, actress and director Olivia Wilde asserted that Harry Styles is not making “three times more” than co-star Florence Pugh for her upcoming movie, Don’t Worry Darling.
The upcoming film has been described as intensely sexual, with fan hysteria growing around the expected sex scenes between Styles and Pugh. Wilde also stated last year that she wanted to make audiences “realise how rarely they see female hunger, and specifically this type of female pleasure” on screens.
A psychological thriller, Don’t Worry Darling sees Pugh and Styles as a young couple in the 1950s whose marriage begins to fall apart when Pugh’s character becomes suspicious of her husband’s work on a secret project.
“Female pleasure, the best versions of it that you see nowadays, are in queer films,” Wilde told Variety. “Why are we more comfortable with female pleasure when it’s two women on film? In hetero sex scenes in film, the focus on men as the recipients of pleasure is almost ubiquitous.”
The 38-year-old director sees the world from a post-feminist mindset and wants to see the women in her films drive action by themselves without the help of men.
“It’s all about immediacy and extreme passion for one another,” Wilde said of the film’s complicated marital relationship. “The impractical nature of their sex speaks to their ferocious desire for one another. I think it’s integral to the story itself and how the audience is meant to connect to them. My early conversations with the cast were all about how the audience has to buy into the fantasy.”
“It’s harder for women to get a second chance at directing,” Wilde said later, recognising that her first film, Booksmart, was a critical triumph but by no means a box office smash, making just $25 million on a $6 million budget. “Fewer people will invest in the second film of a woman than a man,” she says. “I was so lucky. My movie didn’t make a billion dollars. It struck enough of a nerve of the cultural zeitgeist that I was allowed to have another opportunity. I really feel, at this point, that I have earned the right to say I’m a director.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Wilde discussed the involvement of Pugh in the project. She explained that she wanted the young actress on board after seeing her performance in the disturbing horror movie Midsommar. “I had been blown the fuck away by her,” Wilde says. “I loved the film, but I loved her. I was just like, ‘Well, she’s extraordinary. She’s clearly the most exciting young actress working today.’”
In recent weeks, internet-based conjecture surrounding the upcoming feature has run a torrent. One of the popular theories put forward, with little to back it, is that Styles is being paid three times more than Pugh.
After being quizzed on the matter, Wilde denied the claim without hesitation. “There has been a lot out there that I largely don’t pay attention to. But the absurdity of invented clickbait and subsequent reaction regarding a nonexistent pay disparity between our lead and supporting actors really upset me. I’m a woman who has been in this business for over 20 years, and it’s something that I have fought for myself and others, especially being a director. There is absolutely no validity to those claims.”
Watch the official trailer for Don’t Worry Darling below.
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