Chris Pine insists Harry Styles was probably leaning over to tell him an in-joke when the singer was accused of spitting on him at the Venice Film Festival.

Pine, 42, starred alongside Styles, 29, in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling and were at a screening together at the Venice Film Festival in September when footage went viral that claimed to show the singer gobbing on the Star Trek actor.

Speaking to Esquire about the so-called 'Spitgate', Pine said, “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.

“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.’ 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.”

Pine added about recalling the moment may have been shot when Styles told him a joke: “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.’”

A spokeswoman for Pine said at the time the clip went viral: “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.”

Besides the spit, Don’t Worry Darling’ was also plagued by rumours of a fall-out between Wilde and cast member Florence Pugh.

Asked to weigh in on the alleged feud, Pine said:  “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.

“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.”

Watch Pine's Esquire video interview here: 

Pine's latest, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, opens in Singapore cinemas on Mar 30. — BANG SHOWBIZ

Photo: TPG News/Click Photos

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