Florence Pugh Says ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Is ‘Bigger and Better’ Than Her Sex Scenes with Harry Styles
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Florence Pugh doesn’t want her new film to be “reduced” to her sex scenes with Harry Styles.
Pugh, 26, and Styles, 28, play a married couple in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, in which Pugh’s Alice and Styles’ Jack live in Victory, an “experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families,” per an official synopsis.
The first trailer released for the film in May features two moments in which Jack appears to perform oral sex on Alice — a feature of the movie’s pre-release hype that Pugh rejected during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar published Tuesday.
“When it’s reduced to your sex scenes, or to watch the most famous man in the world go down on someone, it’s not why we do it.” Pugh told Harper’s Bazaar. “It’s not why I’m in this industry.”
“Obviously, the nature of hiring the most famous pop star in the world, you’re going to have conversations like that,” she added. “That’s just not what I’m going to be discussing because [this movie is] bigger and better than that. And the people who made it are bigger and better than that.”
Rather than talk about Don’t Worry Darling’s sex scenes, Pugh made sure to compliment the production’s crew and Covid nurses, who would arrive to set as early as 2 a.m., according to Harper’s Bazaar.
“If I shout about one thing,” she said, “it’s that these people made that movie happen. They came to work every day on time and fully respected the process.”
Florence Pugh. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Netflix
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“Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company,” an official synopsis for Don’t Worry Darling reads. “All they ask in return is unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in paradise?”
The psychological thriller is 38-year-old Wilde’s second feature film after 2019’s Booksmart; it draws influence from other not-what-they-seem movies, including The Truman Show, The Matrix and Inception, Wilde previously said.
The director/actress referenced those films during a CinemaCon presentation in April, calling them “movies that push the boundaries of our imagination.”
Wilde also stars in the movie as a supporting character named Bunny, who Pugh was initially scheduled to play before pandemic-caused scheduling problems gave way for Pugh to take the lead role, according to Harper’s Bazaar.
Don’t Worry Darling is scheduled to premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and will hit theaters Sept. 23.