Not here for it. Chris Pine was just as in the dark about potential drama surrounding the Don’t Worry Darling cast as fans were — and he would have liked to keep it that way.
“I absolutely didn’t know about it, nor really would I have cared,” the actor, 42, told Esquire on Wednesday, March 1. “If I feel badly, it’s because the vitriol that the movie got was absolutely out of proportion with what was onscreen.”
The Star Trek star noted that speculation around cast dynamics at the Venice Film Festival left him disappointed. “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,” he continued. “It was ridiculous.”
Don’t Worry Darling, which was released in September 2022, originally sparked interest due to its mysterious plot. The drama, however, quickly escalated off screen after fans started to question whether the film’s lead Florence Pugh had issues with director Olivia Wilde due to her relationship with Harry Styles.
During the project’s promotional tour, Pugh, 27, raised eyebrows when she opted out of doing press at Venice Film Festival. After traveling to the event from the Dune 2 set, the Little Women star skipped interviews and reunited with her costars on the red carpet.
At the time, Wilde, 38, attempted to shut down rumors of a rift, telling reporters, “Florence is a force, and we are so grateful that she’s able to make it tonight despite being in production on Dune. I know, as a director, how disruptive it is to lose an actor even for a day, so I’m very grateful to her, to [Dune director] Denis Villeneuve for helping us. And we’re really thrilled we’ll get to celebrate her work tonight. I can’t say enough how honored I am to have her as our lead. She’s amazing in the film.”
Meanwhile, Pine became a topic of conversation after a video from the film’s screening of him and Styles, 29, went viral. The clip seemingly showed the musician spitting on the Princess Diaries 2 star as he sat down next to him.
Pine, for his part, shut down the claims, with his rep telling Us Weekly in a statement, “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.”
That same month, Wilde addressed the rumors that her then-boyfriend spit on his coworker. “He did not! Harry did not spit on Chris,” she said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, two months before calling it quits with Styles. “He did not! Harry did not spit on Chris.”
While reflecting on his appearance at the event, Pine poked fun at the social media reactions. “All the memes I saw about my face in Venice made me f—king laugh,” he added on Wednesday, referring to photos of him which circulated after the festival. “Sometimes the question’s not that interesting, and you just f—king zone out, and you’re looking at a ceiling because it’s really pretty.”
