Chris Pine has finally revealed whether his Don’t Worry Darling co-star Harry Styles spat on him while at the Venice International Film Festival in August last year.

In a new video interview with Esquire while promoting his upcoming film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Pine revealed what actually happened while he and his cast mates were in Venice last year.

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Reviewing footage of the supposed “spitting incident”, which saw Styles leaning over Pine before taking a seat that would leave the latter looking confused for a moment, Pine revealed: “Harry did not spit on me. Harry is a very, very kind guy.”

Pine followed up the statement by saying that he was on a flight when he was awoken by his publicist, who was scrambling to craft a message about the rumours of the incident that had flooded social media.

“It does look, indeed, like Harry spitting on me. He didn’t spit on me,” Pine said before going on to explain: “I think what he said is – he leaned down – and he said ‘It’s just words, isn’t it?’. We had this little joke. We’re all jet-lagged, we’re all trying to answer these questions. Sometimes when you’re doing these press things, your brain gets befuddled and you start speaking gibberish. And we had a joke: ‘It’s just words, man.’”

Following the cast’s appearance at the Venice International Film Festival, representatives for both Styles and Pine denied the rumours. Pine’s representative said at the time, “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.”

Don’t Worry Darling – which was directed by Olivia Wilde, who also starred in the film alongside Pine, Styles and Florence Pugh – received a four-star review from NME’s Alex Flood. Flood said in his review, noting the mountain of gossip surrounding the film ahead of its release, “It is, admittedly, quite hard to watch Don’t Worry Darling and not think about the accompanying gossip,” concluding with: “What we’re trying to say is a really quite good film has been overshadowed needlessly. And that’s a real shame.”