Chris Pine has acknowledged it "does look like" Harry Styles spat on him during the Venice Film Festival - even though he did not.
Video footage appearing to show the pop superstar spitting on Chris at the premiere of their movie Don't Worry Darling went viral on social media in September, with the Star Trek actor’s representatives swiftly shutting down the rumour.
Addressing the headlines in a video interview for Esquire, Chris recalled how his publicist alerted him to the speculation on the plane journey back from Venice.
"Harry's a very, very kind guy. I was on the plane with my publicist we're flying back from Venice and she wakes me up in a state," he recounted. "She says, 'We have to craft a message about what happened in Venice.' And I'm like, 'About what?' 'About Harry spitting on you.' Which I have no idea what happened. She showed me the thing. It does look, indeed, like Harry spitting on me. He didn't spit on me."
The 42-year-old explained that Harry simply leaned down and said, "It's just words," an in-joke between the pair.
"We had this little joke, because we're all jet-lagged, we're all trying to answer these questions, and sometimes when you're doing these press things, your brain goes all befuddled, you know, you start speaking gibberish, and we had a joke like, 'It's just words, man,'" he explained.
In the accompanying interview with the magazine, Chris insisted he wasn't aware of any drama on the set of Don't Worry Darling and shared that he feels bad about the "vitriol" Olivia Wilde's movie received.
"Venice was normal things getting swept up in a narrative that people wanted to make, compounded by the metastasising that can happen in the Twittersphere. It was ridiculous," he added.
The star also reflected on the memes of him spacing out during the film's press conference.
"All the memes I saw about my face in Venice made me f**king laugh," he chuckled. "Sometimes the question's not that interesting and you just f**king zone out, and you're looking at a ceiling because it's really pretty."
