The alleged on-set drama, the spitting, the festival circuit tension: all, as it turns out, Nick Kroll’s fault. The comedian/actor dropped by The Tonight Show on Monday night (Sept. 26) to graciously, nay, heroically, take the blame for all those rumors you’ve been reading surrounding the drama Don’t Worry Darling.
The Big Mouth creator/star appears alongside Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and director/actress Olivia Wilde in the period drama that was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend. But if you know anything else about Don’t Worry, it’s that the production and promotion has been filled with breathless speculation about alleged on-set tension.
“So, if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s like a thriller,” Kroll explained. “And I think the less you know about the movie going in, the better. So that when you’re watching it, it’s all new and surprising.” But that’s not all. Kroll said that even with the packed cast, the anticipation for Wilde’s second feature directing gig and Styles’ largest acting role to date, he thought the whole thing needed a bit of tabloid goosing.
“So I decided, ‘Let’s create a lot of buzz around the film,’” he explained. “But not about the film itself, right?” Host Jimmy Fallon dubbed Kroll a genius for his inventive marketing plan, with Bobby Bottle Service graciously accepting the compliment and dubbing himself “the puppeteer” for the ancillary action he conjured.
“And so I was like, ‘Hey, Harry, you know what would be a great idea? When you walk into the premiere in Venice, spit on Chris Pine,’” he said by way of example of one of his genius attention-grabbing ideas that briefly had the whole internet wondering if Styles launched a loogie at Pine. “And he was like, ‘got it!’ But then, he was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s gonna work.’ So then, I was like, ‘You know what? Maybe you should just, you know, give me a kiss,’” he added of his and Harry’s infamous Venice lip-lock.
“Anyway, it ended up working,” Kroll crowed.
Watch Kroll talking about Don’t Worry, his new stand-up special and being a dad on The Tonight Show below.