Dean McDermott Is Three Years Sober and Going by 'Clean Dean' Now

Olivia Wilde spent almost four years letting the internet build a whole cinematic universe out of one rumor. This week, on the same morning her new movie hit theaters, she decided she was done being polite about it.

In a new cover interview with The Cut, the actor and director flatly denied the story that has trailed her since 2022: that she and Florence Pugh got into a screaming match on the set of "Don't Worry Darling."

"I have never had a screaming match on my set. I was never not available on set," Wilde told The Cut. "I wanted to be like, 'None of this is true.'"

A quick refresher for anyone who blocked it out

Back during the "Don't Worry Darling" press run, the discourse got very loud. Wilde's relationship with the film's star, Harry Styles, went public. The Venice press conference spawned a thousand frame-by-frame replays. And running underneath all of it was a persistent report that Pugh had grown "fed up with the director's frequent unexplained absences," and that the two women had a blowout argument late in production.

Recapping the saga, TheWrap notes Pugh allegedly contacted distributor New Line Cinema to make sure she would not have to "participate in the film's life cycle in any way." Pugh did, famously, sit out most of the promo. Wilde now says the absentee-director version of events simply did not happen, and several of her crew members backed her at the time, denying the incident and praising her commitment to the project.

The part where she was told to smile and shut up

The juicier confession is about why she let it all sit for years. Per The Cut, Wilde says she was advised to stay quiet through the whole storm.

"I was told, 'Don't say a f---ing word. Just go out there and smile,'" Wilde recalled. "I resent that, but it taught me it's not the way I want to handle things."

She told The Cut she "deeply hate[s] the feeling of being misunderstood," and described watching "complete fiction traded as fact" while being advised that correcting the record "won't help." Her own word for what she turned into in the public imagination:

"I became the full-on villain. Like Cruella."

Why she is saying all this now

The timing is not exactly subtle. The interview landed the same week as "The Invite," Wilde's third feature as a director, which opened June 26 and co-stars Penelope Cruz and Seth Rogen. Wilde told The Cut she wanted to run this press tour on her own terms after feeling steamrolled the last time around. Translation: the smile-and-stay-quiet era is over, and she would like a word.

For the record on the other lingering question, Wilde said she has no regrets about the Harry Styles relationship, calling it loving and joyful, per outlets recapping the interview. Pugh, for her part, has not publicly responded to Wilde's latest comments as of publication. So consider this round one.