Chris Pine is finally ready to talk about one of the biggest debates from 2022: Did Harry Styles spit on him during the world premiere of “Don’t Worry Darling” at the Venice Film Festival? It’s a question that Pine’s representative immediately shot down at the time, saying in a statement: “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.” So what really happened? Pine explained all in a video interview for Esquire magazine.

“Harry did not spit on me,” Pine said. “Harry is a very kind guy. I was on the plane and we’re flying back from Venice having a great time on the plane and my publicist wakes me up and says, ‘We have to craft a statement on what happened in Venice.’ 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?'” Pine continued. “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.'”

“Spitgate,” as it became known on social media, was one of many controversies that erupted during the “Don’t Worry Daring” press tour last fall. Rumors were rampant about on-set feuding between director Olivia Wilde and star Florence Pugh, but Pine stressed to Esquire: “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,” Pine added. “Venice was normal things getting swept up in a narrative that people wanted to make, compounded by the metastasizing that can happen in the Twitter-sphere. It was ridiculous.”

Pine starred in “Don’t Worry Darling” as the villainous Frank, the leader of a utopian 1950s community where everything is not what it seems. A source close to the Venice Film Festival told Variety at at the time that there was no tension around Styles and Pine during the premiere and that a potential spitting incident was flagged by no one during the event.

“Just to be clear, Harry Styles did not spit on Chris Pine,” Pine’s representative added in her statement out of the festival. “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.”

Watch Pine’s full Esquire video interview in the post below.