Don’t Worry Darling: Lead actor Florence Pugh to ‘limit’ press tour, speculations rife about fallout with director Olivia Wilde

Don’t Worry Darling is currently making the news but not for the right reasons. Following the recent ‘fired vs quit’ row that involved film’s director Olivia Wilde and original lead choice Shia LaBeouf, news reports now emerge that all’s not well between Wilde and the female lead Florence Pugh either!

As reported by The Wrap, Florence Pugh has ‘severely limited the promotional press tour’ of the film with speculations now rife about a potential fall-out between her and Olivia Wilde.

While Pugh’s representatives or studio executives chose to not comment on the matter, they confirmed that she will be part of the Venice Film Festival for the film premiere, for now, suggesting that things look dicey as far as the rest of the promotional tour is concerned.

Florence Pugh, 26, is currently shooting for Dennis Villeneuve’s epic science fiction film Dune: Part Two in Budapest and is said to have shot for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer prior to that in the same city. She is expected to fly down to Venice for the film’s premiere and return to Budapest to resume work.

The fall-out rumours between Pugh and Olivia Wilde emerged a few weeks ago when sources close to the production of Don’t Worry Darling claimed that the former was unhappy with the director (Wilde) hooking up with Harry Styles.

Reportedly, Florence Pugh wasn’t very happy seeing Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles strike a rather intimate bond on the sets of the film, especially considering Wilde was still in a relationship with her former partner Jason Sudekis.

Many on the internet claim that while this could be one of the reasons for the bitterness between the two, the fact that Wilde sided with Shia LaBeouf back in 2020 during his rumoured ‘feud’ with Florence Pugh. For the unversed, Olivia Wilde shared in a recent Variety interview that she was forced to fire the Transformers actor as the lead of her film owing to his ‘combative energy’ on the sets.

Don't Worry Darling: Did Shia LaBeouf voluntarily quit Olivia Wilde’s directorial? Or was he fired? 

Although Wilde did not refer to the simmering tension between LaBeouf and Pugh (who were to play a married couple in Don’t Worry Darling), internet sleuths were also certain that things weren’t hunky dory between the two young stars.

However, things took a sharp turn when Shia LaBeouf responded to Wilde’s claims and asserted that he voluntarily backed out of the project due to the lack of proper rehearsal time.

Olivia Wilde’s 2020 video message to Shia LaBeouf, in which she implores him to give the film another chance and also implies that she was siding with him and not Florence Pugh, has now gone viral on social media. Many users believe that Wilde’s stance on the LaBeouf-Pugh matter could have turned things salty between the two.

Needless to say, Olivia Wilde’s ambitious project is currently caught in a whirlwind of controversy but one would hope that the film’s merit would transcend the negativity. More updates to follow soon.