Olivia Wilde sets the record straight on “Spitgate”

With the release of don’t worry darling a day away, Olivia Wilde takes her last chance to set the record straight. Not if she has nothing but glowing things to say about the film’s co-stars, Harry Styles and Florence Pugh. Not on whether or not she had any creative differences with the film’s original star, Shia Labeouf. But on to the drama that no one expected to become a central part of all the chaos that has surrounded the film for months: the truly ridiculous incident known as Spitgate.

In the unlikely event that he was missing from your feeds and timelines, here’s a quick recap. After posing on a red carpet that found actors strategically placed between Wilde, Styles and Pugh, Styles headed to the theater of the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5 and took a seat next to his co-star Chris Pine. From the look of a video that quickly went viral, he also spat on his seatmate in the process. The clip caused such a stir that it wasn’t long before Pine’s rep issued an official shutdown of the theory, and Styles himself felt compelled to speak about it while he was on stage at Madison Square Garden. Now Wilde has entered the chat. She’s here to make sure Styles was joking a lot when he confessed to hacking a loogie on poor unsuspecting Chris.

While interviewing Wilde on The late show, host Stephen Colbert said point-blank: “Did Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine? Why or why not? Support your answer. The manager immediately answered with a firm no. “It’s a perfect example of, like, people going for drama wherever they can,” she said with a laugh. “Harry didn’t spit on Chris, in fact…he really didn’t. People can watch a video that shows evidence of someone not spitting on someone else and they’ll still see what they want to see. And that’s creating the drama, and that’s clickbait. From there came the usual: she has “nothing but respect” for Pugh, to the point that she unfortunately has had to cast her over Shia Labeouf, who was originally slated to play Styles’ character.She is convinced that a male director would never be bombarded with such questions – and in fact Colbert admitted wouldn’t even have thought to ask them if she was a man.

Wilde, Styles and Pugh are no doubt overwhelmed with relief that they can almost put all the drama in the past. As for the rest of us, it’s something to disappoint. When’s the next time we get a series of celebrity gossip as innocuous and delicious as those having to do with phantom saliva?