Olivia Wilde addresses backlash over Harry Styles split
Actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde has lifted the lid on her split from pop star Harry Styles - admitting she was "hurt"by the fallout and compared it to witnessing a "tornado from the inside".
Olivia Wilde was "hurt" by the backlash following her split from Harry Styles.
The actress-turned-director dated the pop star - who appeared in her 2022 film Don't Worry Darling - four years ago but the relationship crumbled around the time they were promoting the movie and Olivia has now confessed the fallout affected the movie as well as her personally.
During an appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast, the host asked: "We were talking about how when the film came out it was derailed by publicity. I mean many multidimensional scandals.
"Your relationship at the time was breaking up. You had a well-publicised relationship with your co-star Harry Styles and, there was a kind of a misogynistic dimension to a lot of the coverage of the drama, the fallout."
Olivia then replied: "I think it did hurt the film for sure because we didn't get to have the conversations about what the film was trying to say, which was a shame because so many people worked so hard to make that film in the depths of COVID.
"We made the film for $30million. I think it looks like a much more expensive film because of the work of people like Matty Libatique, who shot the film, Katie Byron, who production designed the film.
"But we never got to talk about that, so I think it [the coverage of the split] hurt the film. It hurt me for sure, because I was so naive up until that point about the grinder, the garbage disposal that the internet can be.
"So at this point, I have enough of a perspective on it and that allows me to experience it as a fascinating time. It is interesting to witness a tornado from the inside."
Olivia is currently promoting her new movie project The Invite and revealed the experience has felt "healing" following the drama that surrounded Don't Worry Darling.
She added: "Well, it's interesting because this is my first time back into the press cycle since then and I did wonder, would this feel quite traumatising?
"I find that the conversations around The Invite are so wonderfully interesting to me, and I've actually been allowed to have them.
"So, it's been actually kind of healing because I understand that it's not always a garbage disposal."
Don't Worry Darling was also impacted by rumours of a feud between the director and her lead actress Florence Pugh, but Olivia has since spoken out to dismiss that gossip.
She previously told Elle magazine: "It is shocking to see so many untruths about yourself traded as fact.
"Florence had a really wise comment that we didn’t sign up for a reality show, and I love that she put it that way, because it’s as though the general public feels that if you are making something that you’re selling to the public, you somehow have accepted that your life will be torn to shreds by a pack of wolves.
"No, that’s actually not part of the job description. Never was."
