Arguably the biggest talk of the 2022 Venice Film Festival is essentially everything to do with Don’t Worry Darling, the latest directorial effort from Olivia Wilde. With all the drama that is reportedly brewing between the cast and crew, it might be hard to think there’s any love left. But that’s where stars Harry Styles and Nick Kroll want to prove you wrong.
After the film’s premiere at the festival, with Florence Pugh and Wilde sitting notedly far away from one another, Styles, who plays Jack Chambers in the film, turns to co-star Kroll, who plays Bill, and gives him a big wet one right on the lips.
The make-out in question was captured by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, who was in attendance.
That’s one way to celebrate the premiere of your film, I guess, though you’d think that the four-minute standing ovation it received would be good enough. Sometimes emotion just grabs a hold of you and doesn’t let go. Actors – they’re just like us!
Naturally, this latest exhibition of queer-adjacent behavior from Mr. Styles promptly has the fans in full swoon mode.
And, once the swooning and realization of what had just happened passed, memes were soon to follow.
This kiss is likely only going to stir the queerbaiting discourse around Harry Styles further, as the controversy around his comments on his other upcoming film My Policeman only just begins to settle.
In My Policeman, Styles plays a cop who falls in love with another man in 1950s England. But, upon being criticized for portraying a queer role as, what the public knows, a heterosexual actor, Styles fought back in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“Sometimes people say, ‘You’ve only publicly been with women,’ and I don’t think I’ve publicly been with anyone. If someone takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to have a public relationship or something.”
He also controversially commented on how he believed queer sex has historically been portrayed in film.
“So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it.”
So, naturally, his first public appearance post this interview is him… going at it with another man. C’est la vie.
Don’t Worry Darling arrives in cinemas on Sept. 23, via Warner Bros.