Chris Pine Laughs Off Rumors of Harry Styles Feud: “It Did Look Like Harry Spit on Me”

Though Chris Pine was mostly spared from all of the interpersonal drama that played out during last year’s release of Don’t Worry Darling, you’ll recall that there was one moment at the Venice Film Festival in September when it appeared that his co-star, Harry Styles, spat on Pine.

At the time, Pine’s representative shut it down, saying in a statement to People, “This is a ridiculous story — a complete fabrication and the result of an odd online illusion that is clearly deceiving and allows for foolish speculation. Just to be clear, Harry Styles did not spit on Chris Pine. There is nothing but respect between these two men and any suggestion otherwise is a blatant attempt to create drama that simply does not exist.”

In a recent video interview with Esquire magazine, Pine was asked about the incident, and he confirmed once again that nary a drop of Styles’ spittle touched him, but he agreed that the video of the incident looked damning.

“Harry did not spit on me,” Pine confirmed. “Harry is a very kind guy.”

Pine said that after the incident happened and he was traveling home from Venice, his publicist told him, “‘We have to craft a statement on what happened in Venice. About Harry spitting on you.’ She showed me the thing and it did look, indeed, like Harry spit on me. He didn’t spit on me.”

“I think Harry leaned down and said, ‘It’s just words isn’t it?’ We had this little joke. We were all jet-lagged and trying to answer questions and sometimes when you’re doing these press things your brain goes befuddled and you start speaking gibberish, so we had a joke: ‘It’s just words.’”

And there you have it, just words, no spit.

In the print interview that accompanies the video where Pine denies that Spit-Gate happened, he also adds that he had no idea whether or not there was drama between Olivia Wilde, Styles or co-star Florence Pugh on the set.

“If there was drama, there was drama. I absolutely didn’t know about it, nor really would I have cared. If I feel badly, it’s because the vitriol that the movie got was absolutely out of proportion with what was onscreen,” he said. “Venice was normal things getting swept up in a narrative that people wanted to make, compounded by the metastasizing that can happen in the Twittersphere. It was ridiculous.”

Pine stars in the upcoming film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves which arrives in theaters March 31.