The film, which is Wilde’s second directorial outing after 2019’s Booksmart, premiered at Italy’s Venice Film Festival this week, boasts a star-studded cast that includes Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, and Wilde herself.

Shia LaBeouf, who was originally cast, departed the project early on.

With the cast now hitting the promotional trail, interest in all things related to the movie has spilled over into the political realm, including claims concerning Wilde’s mother, Leslie Cockburn, who was defeated as the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives back in 2018.

The Claim

Noting all of the drama surrounding Don’t Worry Darling, a Twitter user on Tuesday said that Cockburn had leveled bizarre allegations at her political opponent Denver Riggleman, the Republican who eventually beat her in the race for office.

“Olivia Wilde’s mom ran for Congress in #VA05 in 2018 and accused her opponent of being a ‘devotee of Bigfoot erotica’ if that’s a morsel of information that will be of interest to your Don’t Worry Darling group chat,” quipped the Twitter user.

The comment sparked a huge reaction from other people on the micro-blogging platform, with many stating that Riggleman was indeed the author of such material.

As the thread gained traction, it caught the attention of Riggleman himself, who repeatedly denied allegations that he had authored any such work.

When one person wrote that Riggleman “was a fan of Big Foot Erotica,” he responded: “No I wasn’t. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Technically he was an author of Bigfoot erotica,” said another, prompting Riggleman to snipe: “Technically you’re full of s***.”

Riggleman, who was defeated in his bid for re-election in 2020, further told Molly Jong-Fast, a contributing writer for Vogue and The Atlantic, that he was “watching the idiots on this, Molly. Olivia’s momma lied.”

Elsewhere in his stream of responses to commenters, Riggleman stated of his battle against Cockburn for office: “Sane guy won. Liar lost.”

Despite Riggleman’s efforts to assert a different narrative, many of those engaged in the conversation appeared to accept the idea that he had written “Bigfoot erotica.”

The Facts

Cockburn, an award-winning journalist, shook up the campaign trail in July 2018, when she accused Riggleman of associating with a white supremacist and being a fetishizer of Bigfoot erotica.

Riggleman had previously written a self-published book surrounding the myth of Bigfoot titled Bigfoot Exterminators, Inc.: The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006. The non-erotic work was about people who hunt for Bigfoot.

“My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist,” Cockburn wrote at the time. “Now he has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill.”

To support her allegation, Cockburn shared a screenshot of Riggleman’s Instagram post, which showed a Bigfoot illustration, with the purported ape-like creature’s genitals censored.

“Covert art for #matinghabitsofbigfoot almost complete,” read a caption attributed to Riggleman. “I hide nothing in this magnificent tome. Don’t erase the censor box…”

In denying his opponent’s claims, Riggleman directed his Twitter followers to a video on his “research into the Bigfoot myth,” adding: “I sure don’t know what Bigfoot Erotica is, @LeslieCockburn knows more about that than I do apparently.”

Such was the furor surrounding the “Bigfoot erotica” claims that Air Force veteran Riggleman also spoke out against the allegations in an interview with ABC News.

He explained that the image shared by Cockburn was taken from a book he co-authored called The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him. He also said that the book was written as a running joke with his friends from the military.

“We didn’t think anyone in the wide world would be dumb enough to think that was anything but a joke, but it went viral,” he said at the time.

Riggleman had previously told the same outlet that while he did not believe in the existence of Bigfoot, he had no desire to “alienate Bigfoot voters.”

Newsweek has contacted Riggleman and Cockburn for comment.

The Ruling

True. Cockburn, who was supported by Wilde throughout her campaign, did accuse her then-opponent of being a “devotee” of “Bigfoot erotica” in a Twitter post she shared while vying for office.

While Riggleman continues to vehemently deny the allegations—and there is no proof that any such work was authored by the politician, and the Instagram post was described by him as an “in-joke”—Cockburn’s post has not been deleted and remains on Twitter.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK