Olivia Wilde Reveals Dark Inspiration for Chris Pine’s ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Character

Don’t Worry Darling’s Harry Styles and Florence Pugh have been making headlines lately, along with the movie’s director, Olivia Wilde. However, many may not know that Hollywood A-lister, Chris Pine, is leading the film’s supporting cast in a surprisingly dark role. 

Chris Pine’s Frank in ‘Don’t Worry Darling’

Aside from his role in 2006’s action-comedy, Smokin’ Aces, Pine has rarely had the opportunity to play anything but a mainstream love interest and/or clean-cut hero. But in a recent interview with Interview Magazine, Wilde told fellow actor-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal that Pine’s Don’t Worry Darling character, Frank, was inspired by incel-hero Jordan Peterson.

In the interview, Wilde describes Peterson as a “pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community” and goes on to offer a brief description of Incels, which is derived from the phrase “involuntarily celibate.” Wilde describes incels as “disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.” 

“They believe 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.”

Jordan Peterson as a champion for ‘incels‘

As shocking as the concept might seem, Incels—which is short for involuntary celibates—are a real community. However, even more shockingly, the group was founded by a woman. 

According to New America, the community began in the 1990s as Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project, after a bisexual woman in Toronto wanted to “support people who wanted but lacked romantic relationships.” Over the past three decades, the group has grown in numbers and force, becoming what is largely considered a hate group against women. 

The first violent attack attributed to the incel community was in 2014 by 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Santa Barbara before killing himself. Before the attack, Rodger wrote about his misogynistic views on women and discussed “overthrowing” what he believed was a “feminist system.” (via New America).

This attack was followed by an attack in 2018 during which Alek Minassian killed 11 people in his van attack after issuing a statement saying an “incel rebellion” was beginning. (via Harper’s Bazaar). In addition to Rodger and Minassian, who have been praised by other “incels,” Peterson is touted as an icon of incels after vocalizing his support for their beliefs.

As a clinical psychologist and former professor, Peterson has a substantial public and media presence and is generally regarded as an intellectual and traditionalist. He also supports the idea of “enforced monogamy,” telling The New York Times that Minassian was “angry at God because women were rejecting him… The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”

The Victory Project of ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ 

Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling seems poised to echo many of these ideologies. As the leader of the film’s fictional Victory Project, Pine’s Frank creates a utopian society in which women seem to fulfill many of the incel community’s fantasies. In the trailer for the film, Frank is heard before he is seen, saying, “All of you wives, we men, we ask a lot. We ask for strength, food at home, a house cleaned, and discretion above all else” before a scene in which Frank leads the women in a chant about “changing the world.”

But Wilde also tells Rolling Stone of a scene in which Styles’ character stands on a stage with Frank and chants, “Whose world is it? Ours!” In response to Wilde’s comments, Peterson spoke to the National Post over the weekend, saying that being represented by someone as “attractive” as Pine was flattering, issuing his hopes that Frank’s wardrobe was up to snuff and relegating the film as “the latest bit of propaganda disseminated by the woke, self-righteous bores and bullies” of Hollywood.

Even after only seeing Don’t Worry Darling’s trailer, it is not hard to imagine Peterson’s words spilling from the mouth of the seriously good-looking, well-dressed Victory Project leader.