Harry Styles ‘spitting’ on Chris Pine leads to more Don’t Worry Darling drama

The internet was curious about one thing on Monday Sept. 5, 2022: Was Harry Styles actually spitting on Chris Pine?

The truth is unlikely to be discovered no matter how many times the video clips are viewed. But there’s another question that we might be able to get to the bottom of: Why would anyone think he did?

Styles and Pine promote the new movie at this time. Don’t Worry DarlingOlivia Wilde directed “The Greatest Showmanship”BooksmartCo-starring Midsommar’s Florence Pugh. The production has been at the center of of a firestorm of celebrity gossip for over a year, culminating in yesterday’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which produced this murky-but-extraordinary piece of footage:

Styles sits next to Pine for the film and he briefly bends over to his co-star. Pine looks at Styles as though something has just fallen on his lap or maybe his shoes, and freezes in mid-clap. Styles makes eye contact and Pine smiles. They both smile.

It’s a mesmerizing clip that has all of Twitter freezing, zooming and enhancing in search of some unknowable truth. Styles may purse his lips, sigh and then jerk forward infinitely. Maybe. On the other hand, is Pine just looking down to pick up the spectacles he’s dropped on his seat? This could be. It’s really Pine’s reaction that sells it, plus the incongruous, summery glamor of the setting: Wilde’s cascading lemon-yellow dress on the left of the frame, Styles’ electric-blue suit and extravagant shirt lapels on the right, Pine’s country-club bow tie and sockless ankles caught between them.

Here’s another angle that’s no more conclusive, although it does run a little longer, and shows the two men appearing to exchange words in a friendly enough manner after the alleged incident.

To understand what’s behind the frenzy over the clip, however, you have to take in the context: the whole, tortured, gossipy saga of Don’t Worry Darling, which guaranteed that footage of the film’s stars at its premiere was going to be pored over, and body language analyzed to within an inch of its life. This wasn’t even the first Pine-and-Styles meme of the Day.

Here’s a short-ish recap:

• Styles was reportedly Wilde’s first date during production. It is believed that Styles began seeing Wilde shortly after she divorced her husband Jason Sudeikis, (Ted Lasso). With whom she has two kids. Wilde and Styles are said to still be in a relationship, but haven’t gone public at any stage.
• Wilde received legal documents from Sudeikis regarding her custody rights while on the Las Vegas stage of CinemaCon. Don’t Worry Darling. This isn’t necessarily relevant to the cast drama, but it’s still incredible that it happened.
• Wilde stated in a Variety article that she fired Shia LaBeouf, a troubled actor who is currently facing assault charges against his ex-singer FKA Twigs), from the movie and had replaced him by Styles. LaBeouf quickly retorted, claiming he had quit production.
• Speculation of a rift between Pugh and Wilde has been rife, fueled by an apparent lack of enthusiasm on Pugh’s part for promoting the film. There are rumours that Pugh took issue with Wilde and Styles’ on-set relationship.
• Pugh was not able to attend the Venice press conference. Don’t Worry DarlingThe shoot was canceled officially because of a conflict in scheduling Part 2: Dune. Minutes later she made an impressive entrance at the festival, but didn’t do interviews.

• In a much-memed moment, Pine adopted a thousand-yard stare during Styles’ answers at the press conference.

• Pine was very kind to Pugh in his comments. photographing adoringly, but he didn’t make much mention of Wilde or Styles.
• Styles, Wilde, and Pugh seemed to make an effort not to photograph next to one another at Venice. Pine and Gemma Chan often acted as human buffers.
• Reviewers for the film posted mixed reactions amid this chaos.

The gossip was all over the place, but almost no one addressed it on the record. This made Venice’s public appearance in Venice very interesting. The irony is that Pine, a relative bystander who had kept his nose clean of controversy throughout, found himself in the eye of the storm, and as the main focus of Monday’s imagery.

Styles’ disrespect for his co-actor was what could be the reason? Some speculate the younger star had been offended by Pine’s eye-rolling at the press conference, others that his nose was put out of joint by Pine’s apparent siding with Pugh in the still-apocryphal feud with Wilde.

It is unlikely that we will ever know. We will never know the identities of any of these men, from the Venice-based alleged expectorant to the on-set romance that began it all. Don’t Worry Darling The scandal has been proven. Amid this storm of fascinating, exasperating nothingness, we are all Chris Pine: disassociating blankly amid the noise, or laughing ruefully at the mess that’s just been dumped in our lap.

The film itself has been completely overshadowed in all this (although there’s a school of thought that its box office will benefit — there’s no such thing as bad publicity, after all). In a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to judge it on its own terms, and for some — certainly its publicists, and possibly Chris Pine — that will come as a blessed relief.

Don’t Worry DarlingReleased in theatres September 23, 2022