There’s been a lot of press around the upcoming Olivia Wilde directed movie Don’t Worry Darling, and not all of it has been good. Casting choices aside, Wilde recently revealed that one of the characters in the movie is based on the controversial public figure Jordan Peterson.
In a recent interview by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal in Interview Magazine, Wilde revealed that Chris Pine’s character was Peterson-inspired. For the uninitiated, Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, professor, and author who captured everyone’s attention due to his controversial stances on gender, race, sex.
Peterson is also a favorite thought figure for incels (involuntary celibates, AKA young men online who are hostile toward women because they can’t attract any). Wilde called the public figure “terrifying.” Gyllenhaal also got in a lesson in the term from Wilde during the interview.
“WILDE: Terrifying. We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels?
GYLLENHAAL: No.
WILDE: They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.
GYLLENHAAL: Oh, right.
WILDE: And 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.
GYLLENHAAL: Well, they must be psyched. Things are going really well for them.”
Wilde went on to explain that 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. “
Don’t Worry Darling will debut on September 5 in Venice and on September 23 in theaters all over the United States. It stars Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Wilde, Pine, and Nick Kroll.