Cast your mind back to the beginning of September 2022, we were entering awards season and things were hotting up with the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. The internet briefly became obsessed with rumours circling Olivia Wilde’s new movie Don’t Worry Darling. There were reports that Wilde didn’t get on with star Florence Pugh, there was also Wilde’s rumoured relationship with star Harry Styles, and then at the Venice premiere – Styles allegedly spat on co-star Chris Pine.
Well Twitter exploded, with people examining the footage like it was the Zapruder film. Whether Styles did or did not spit, it was clearly a joke taken in good humour by his fellow member of the Don’t Worry Darling cast, as Pine can clearly be seen smiling. Now that the furore has died down, Pine has cleared things up in an interview with Esquire.
“I was on the plane with my publicist, who says I look like Rachel from Friends [with my current hairstyle], we’re flying back from Venice. And I’m sleeping, having a great time on the plane. I love planes,” he begins. “And she wakes me up, in a, you know, in a state. She says, ‘We have to craft a message about what happened in Venice.’ And I’m like ‘About what?’ ‘About Harry spitting on you.'”
Pine admits that it looks like Styles spat on him. “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.” Oh, to have been a fly on the airplane wall when Pine was rudely awoken and told to draft a statement about spit-gate.
Pine tried to remember what Styles said to make Pine pause and smile; “I think what he said, is he leaned down, and I think he said, ‘It’s just words, isn’t it?’ Because we had this little joke, because we’re all jetlagged, 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.'”
The true story behind spit-gate is in some ways, even funnier. Other moments that went viral at Venice included Pine looking like he was ‘disassociating’ during interviews (clearly jetlagged), and Styles struggling to find words such as; “You know, my favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie.” It really is just words, man.
For more drama on the screen, rather than behind it, check out our guide to the best drama movies.