Sophia Michaels
After a deluge of gossip and controversy outlined here in exhaustive detail — by only slightly exhausted Rolling Stone staffers — Olivia Wilde may have finally gotten her “female orgasm awareness press tour” for Don’t Worry Darling back on track with this fun new detail: Chris Pine’s character was inspired by Jordan Peterson.
In the film, Pine plays Frank, the founder of the mysterious “Victory Project,” which is behind the seemingly idyllic 1950s town where the main characters, Jack (Harry Styles) and Alice (Florence Pugh), live (Jack also works for Frank’s company). Speaking with Maggie Gyllenhaal in Interview, Wilde explained that Frank was partly based on “this insane man Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community.”
Wilde then asked Gyllenhaal, “You know the incels?” To which Gyllenhaal enviably replied, “No.” In explaining the loose, extremely online movement and its beliefs, Wilde noted it comprises men who feel “entitled to sex from women” and “that society has now robbed them — that the idea of feminism is working against nature, and that we must be put back into the correct place.”
And as for Peterson’s role in all this, Wilde elaborated: “[T]his guy Jordan Peterson is someone that legitimizes certain aspects of their movement because he’s a former professor, he’s an author, he wears a suit, so they feel like this is a real philosophy that should be taken seriously.”
Of course, the specifics of what Frank is cooking up with the Victory Project in Don’t Worry Darling remain a mystery, though considering the film’s general psychological thriller/Stepford Wives vibes, it’s no surprise Wilde found inspiration in someone like Peterson. Let’s just hope this doesn’t give the guy an inadvertent ego boost, which, unfortunately, it probably will.
And also, let’s be real, the biggest takeaway here is that we should all strive to be as offline and unaware of incels as Maggie Gyllenhaal.
