Olivia Wilde is once again addressing the topic of Shia LaBeouf.
A couple of weeks ago, Olivia claimed in an interview that she fired Shia from Don’t Worry Darling. Shia responded and said that he actually quit. He was replaced by Harry Styles. A leaked video that Olivia allegedly sent Shia also surfaced where she seemingly was trying to convince him to continue with the film, which made it seem like he did in fact quit.
Now, in a recent interview on The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, Olivia spoke about the topic to clarify what really happened. Stephen told her:
“It must be particularly frustrating to have people talking about a lot of things that aren’t the film itself.”
Olivia jokingly responded, “Oh, are they?” She went on to say:
“The whole experience has sort of changed my way of thinking about the internet and how we chose to interact with it- or not. But, really, it’s kind of ironic, because all of this is really what the film’s about. The film is about the narratives we are fed and whether we chose to accept them or question their sources.”
She then touched on what happened with Shia:
“There were private messages that were released without context to try to make a situation look like something that it wasn’t. Early on in the process of making the film, as the director, I tried to mediate a situation between people to try to see if they could work together happily.
Once it became clear that it was not a tenable working relationship, I was given an ultimatum. I chose my actress [Florence Pugh], which I’m very happy I did. At the time, was I bummed that we weren’t able to make it work? Sure. Did information about him come to light later that made me confident we made the right decision? Absolutely.”
Stephen directly asked:
‘Did you fire Shia LaBeouf?”
To which Olivia stated:
“We had to replace Shia. He’s a fantastic actor but it wasn’t gonna work. When he gave me the ultimatum of, you know, him or Florence, I chose Florence.
That was him feeling he was stepping away and me feeling like we were moving on without him.”
