A key Don't Worry Darling scene could have taken a week to film, according to director Olivia Wilde. Starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, the film made headlines at its recent Venice Film Festival premiere due to rumors of behind-the-scenes drama. Don't Worry Darling centers on Alice (Pugh) and Jack (Styles), a young couple who move into a seemingly utopian community led by Frank (Chris Pine). While Jack begins to buy into the cult-like mentality preached by the community's leader, Alice becomes increasingly disillusioned with their life, attempting to reveal the community's dark secrets.
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As tension begins to mount, Alice decides to reveal her suspicions to members of the community in a key dinner scene about halfway through the film. She sits at a table with multiple characters, including Frank and her husband. As she begins to grow more passionate, attempting to keep Jack and the others on her side, Frank's quiet command over the room only increases, ultimately discrediting her words. The scene is a pivotal moment that reveals the shifting alliances of multiple characters, so it makes sense that Wilde zeroed in on making every aspect just right while filming.
In a scene breakdown for Vanity Fair, Wilde expressed how crucial the dinner scene was to the film as a whole. She states that they took a full day on set to film it, but could have used an entire week to truly nail it down. See Wilde's full quote below:
"This scene took all day long, and I would've loved seven days for this scene. I knew that I would only have a day, and so I asked quite a lot of the actors to come prepared, come ready, come focused, and they absolutely did, and they delivered in a way that would just far surpass my expectations."
Wilde's comments display her attention to detail and commitment to getting her vision just right in the final cut of her sophomore feature. Her mention of wishing she had seven days to shoot it points to the importance of that particular scene to the rest of the production. Wilde having the actors prepare beforehand shows that her dedication to the scene extended to the production as a whole in a way that clearly benefited the filming process. Though Wilde and the rest of the crew just had one day to perfect the pivotal sequence, their work clearly paid off in the director's eyes.
As rumors about the Don't Worry Darling drama continue to dominate the movie's press, reviews have also begun to circulate since its debut, painting a mixed picture of the film. Some early reviews have praised Pugh's performance but little else. Wilde's passion for her craft and this film, in particular, are evident based on her words, and it remains to be seen whether that passion along with the actors' performances will be enough to redeem the film when Don't Worry Darling makes its way to the box office later this month.