Last year there was a lot of buzz at the Don’t Worry Darling premiere in Venice after a clip allegedly showed Harry Styles spitting on Chris Pine. In the footage, Styles walks to sit beside Pine with his head angled toward him. Pine then stops clapping momentarily and smiles in what many online described as “disbelief.”

Days later, Styles addressed the spitting controversy in a joking manner.

“It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to be back in New York,” Styles told the audience at his concert. “I just popped very quickly to Venice to spit on Chris Pine.”

A representative for Pine denied the incident and claimed it was a “fabrication.” But now, nearly half a year later, Pine has spoken out about the alleged dribble himself.

In a video interview with Enquire, Pine reacted and commented on the original clip that, stirred all the spitting comments.

“Harry did not spit on me,” Pine said. “Harry’s a very kind guy.”

Pine described how the publicist woke him up when he flew back from Venice and said, “We have to craft a message about what happened in Venice.” Pine had no idea what she was talking about until she showed him the video.

“It does look indeed like Harry’s spitting on me,” Pine admitted but claimed that wasn’t true.

“I think Harry leaned down and said, ‘It’s just words, isn’t it?’ Because we had this little joke. We were all jet lagged and trying to answer questions, and sometimes when you’re doing these press things, your brain goes befuddled, and you start speaking gibberish, so we had a joke: ‘It’s just words.’”

“Venice was normal things getting swept up in a narrative that people wanted to make, compounded by the metastasizing that can happen in the Twittersphere. It was ridiculous.”