Olivia Wilde was “gobsmacked” when she watched her boyfriend Harry Styles perform one particular scene in their upcoming film Don’t Worry Darling.
The movie tells the story of a 1950s Alice housewife (Florence Pugh) living in a utopian community where her husband, Jack (Styles) works on a secret project, the details of which he declines to divulge. The scene in question, which depicts a promotion during a company gala scene, “left us all in tears,” she told Rolling Stone for Styles’ latest cover story.
“It’s a strange scene, full of fascist references, and a disturbing amount of male rage,” Olivia Wilde said. “The scene called for him to stand onstage with Frank (Chris Pine) and chant their creepy slogan, ‘Who’s world is it? Ours!’ over and over again. Dark as hell. But Harry took it to another level. He was so fully in the moment, he began screaming the lines to the crowd, in this primal roar, that was way more intense than anything we expected from the scene.”
“The camera operator followed him as he paced around the stage like a kind of wild animal,” Wilde added of the Don’t Worry Darling scene. “We were all gobsmacked at the monitor. I think even Harry was surprised by it. Those are the best moments for an actor — when you’re completely outside your body.”
In addition to Don’t Worry Darling, this fall, Harry Styles also stars in Michael Grandage’s My Policeman, which tells the story of Tom (Styles), a closeted gay police officer in 1950s England who secretly falls in love with Patrick, a museum curator (David Dawson).
The pop star remarked on how startling it was to consider the realities of being LGBTQ+ during that era.
“It’s obviously pretty unfathomable now to think, ‘Oh, you couldn’t be gay. That was illegal,’ ” Harry Styles told Rolling Stone. “I think everyone, including myself, has your own journey with figuring out sexuality and getting more comfortable with it.”
Though My Policeman contains multiple sex scenes between him and Dawson, Styles notes that the movie is about so much more than that.
Also Read: John Mayer Says His Song ‘Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967’ Is Being Made Into a Movie
“It’s not like ‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me,'” he said.
“So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it,” he added. “There will be, I would imagine, some people who watch it who were very much alive during this time when it was illegal to be gay, and [Michael Grandage] wanted to show that it’s tender and loving and sensitive.”
Styles also explained how he feels about acting versus making music, and how jarring the delayed gratification of making movies can be.
“In music, there’s such an immediate response to what you do. You finish a song and people clap,” he said. “When you’re filming and they say ‘cut,’ there’s maybe part of you that expects everyone to start clapping, [but] they don’t. Everyone, obviously, goes back to doing their jobs, and you’re like, ‘Oh, shit, was it that bad?’”
Following his 2017 role in Dunkirk and now this year’s Don’t Worry Darling and My Policeman, he doesn’t anticipate doing another movie for a while.
“I think there’ll be a time again when I’ll crave it,” he said. “But when you’re making music, something’s happening. It feels really creative, and it feeds stuff. A large part of acting is the doing nothing, waiting thing. Which if that’s the worst part, then it’s a pretty good job. But I don’t find that section of it to be that fulfilling. I like doing it in the moment, but I don’t think I’ll do it a lot.”
He still has a deal with Marvel to fulfill: He will play Eros, Thanos’ mischievous brother, in at least one upcoming Eternals film, Rolling Stone noted. Don’t worry — there’s more Eros in store than that one post-credit scene.
“It’d be funny if that was it, wouldn’t it?” Styles joked.
Don’t Worry Darling hits theaters on Sept. 23, and My Policeman will hit theaters and Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 21.
Main Image: Harry Styles and Florence Pugh in Don’t Worry Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde.
Share:
