Robert Pattinson has responded to Chris Hansen’s criticisms of Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, in which Pattinson plays the US TV host.
“I hope he likes the movie,” said Pattinson in response to a question from Screen about Hansen’s criticisms, including the pre-screening advertising Hansen has taken out in front of every screening of the film.
Venice Competition title Primetime depicts Hansen (Pattinson) as he hosts To Catch A Predator, his successful 2000s TV show about sting operations to catch potential internet predators. Hansen was not involved in the production of the A24 film, and has purchased pre-screening adverts before every screening directing audience towards his streaming service TruBlu. Hansen has not seen the film, having declined to sign an NDA from A24 in order to watch a pre-premiere screening. Hansen said he found Pattinson’s performance “overly dramatic” in the film’s trailer.
“I never set out to make a movie about Chris Hansen,” said Pattinson, who is a producer on the film through his Icki Eneo Arlo with Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen for their Square Peg, Fred Berger, Brighton McCloskey, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and William Iannaccone. “There’s something electrifying about him. I hope the amount of inspiration that his character has given so many people is some kind of compliment.
“The more you watch the show, there’s something magnetic about his presence,” said Pattinson. “Chris is a character you can’t help but imitate.
“I watched the show when I was younger and didn’t think about it. When you obsessively watch it, you realise there’s a strange alchemy that’s going on with the aesthetics of the show, how he’s directed and put it together. Something he’s doing is the reason why people are still talking about that show 20 years later, and it’s not solely to do with the subject matter. We were trying to capture a collective enthusiasm in his mystery.”
US singer Phoebe Bridgers has her first acting role in the film, with Pattinson saying that he had no idea about Oppenheim’s friendship with Bridgers (which predates Bridgers’ music stardom).
“Phoebe Bridgers? Sure, why don’t we just get the Queen?!” joked Pattinson. “She turned up on the first day so relaxed, and I was so impressed. She was so good at improvising. It’s a hard movie to be your first movie, and she was amazing.”
“It was super intimidating when Lance asked me initially,” said Bridgers of acting for the first time. “I can’t get over being natural with something that you already know is happening. The fundamentals of it don’t make any sense. But working with incredible people makes it way easier. It was so fun and free.”
Child actors
Several Primetime cast members, including Pattinson, Skyler Gisondo and Jonathan Lipnicki, found success as child actors. Oppenheim said that played into their roles in a film that considers the exploitation of children.
“Absolutely, in terms of casting the movie and being aware of people and what they had brought to cinema before this film,” said the director. “It was an honour to work with everyone and take the baggage they have brought to movies before and figure out new ways of expressing, for them to shed the skin of who they were in different films and find the heart of what the characters that Ajon (Singh, writer) and I were centring into.”
Pattinson has had a busy few years with The Drama, Primetime, Dune: Part III, The Odyssey, and now shooting The Batman: Part II. He went straight from filming Primetime to The Odyssey last year. “I can definitely hear a little Chris Hansen in The Odyssey,” laughed the actor, who said he had just a few hours between production on the two films.
The actor also responded the the meme-ification of his work, including the line ‘Somebody get these beggars out of here’ from The Odyssey. “When I was younger and there was a big movie out, everyone would remember and do imitations of individual lines, from Jim Carrey movies and stuff like that,” said Pattinson. “I felt like that had completely gone from the culture for years; and suddenly it has been replaced by memes, and I quite like that.”
“You can repurpose them. And you can never tell the audience how to feel about where you’re going; but you can hopefully give them stuff to be attached to, and the more attached they are to a movie, the more rewatchability and endurance it has.”
A24 will release Primetime on September 25 in the US, and on October 30 in UK-Ireland. Venice Film Festival runs until Saturday, September 12.
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