Twitter Is Wondering If Harry Styles Spat on Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival

Update, 9/6: A representative for Chris Pine told Variety: “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.” He called the rumors "the result of an odd online illusion."

Original story: Chris Pine has entered the chat, people. And by "the chat" I mean "the Don't Worry Darling drama that has played on loop in my head for weeks." Pine, who stars in the film alongside Harry Styles and Florence Pugh, exuberantly hyped up Pugh at the Venice Film Festival, implying he was not Team Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde—more on how all of that went down in a sec—which culminated in a very strange video that I have watched at least, oh, 15 times and counting. It's impossible to say exactly what is happening here, but Twitter believes that Harry Styles might have...spat on Chris Pine?

Which, I have to say—and I say this as someone who has been hooked on every beat thus far of the very outlandish yet very believable Don't Worry Darling drama—seems unlikely. Still, watch the video and decide for yourself (you can click into it to watch):

Let's back up a little here. First, here's Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival earlier today, passionately hyping up Pugh, his co-star in Don't Worry Darling. Pine has gushed about Pugh in the past, noting to Entertainment Tonight, “Florence is an incredible actress...I can't speak more highly of her."

Pine is famously lovely—there's a reason he's known as the "Best Chris"—but to anyone with even a fleeting knowledge of the Don't Worry Darling saga, it can appear here that he's picking sides. Especially given this video from earlier in the day, which appears to show Pine looking, well, unimpressed while Styles talks, to put it mildly:

But let's go even further back. Before Pine entered the chat, things were already seeming...tense between Pugh and the film's most high-profile couple: Wilde, the film's director, and Styles, who has been dating Wilde for over a year. Fans noticed that Pugh had seemed to abstain from promoting Don't Worry Darling on her social media pages—rumors that picked up fire when Pugh participated in almost no interviews or press around the movie. (Pugh's reps maintain that she's busy filming Dune: Part Two.)

Wilde and Styles, meanwhile, have been excitedly hyping up the movie with the same energy Pine gave Pugh on the Venice red carpet. But when Wilde suggested in interviews about the film that she'd fired Shia LaBeouf from the role now occupied by Styles, LaBeouf fired back to deny it. Then, a video leaked that showed Wilde seemingly asking LaBeouf to stay on the film, with Wilde adding: "You know, I think this might be a bit of a wake-up call for Miss Flo, and I want to know if you’re open to giving this a shot with me, with us. If she really commits, if she really puts her mind and heart into it at this point and if you guys can make peace—and I respect your point of view, I respect hers—but if you guys can do it, what do you think? Is there hope? Will you let me know?"

So: Could the tension between Styles and Pine has ramped up to the point that Styles spat on him? Was the spitting an accident on Styles' part, and both of them tried to act like it hadn't happened? Again, it seems extremely unlikely that Styles would have spat on Pine in front of the world's press—but, again, the video has some people convinced: