For most of his life, Robert Pattinson has walked into a room only to be interrogated by various news outlets. It’s unclear how much they know about him, but it’s obvious they’re trying to squeeze something out for the public’s amusement. These are often banal questions related to the fabricated reality he’s created for himself. It’s the type of projection that makes everyone think they know Robert Pattinson, but after over two decades of walking into rooms, the better predicament is to ask how closer we, the viewing audience, are to any greater truth. Have we been sending the best interrogators to profit off his likeness?
Articles have been written. Biographies have been published. To the extent that we understand the basic framework, we watch him speak and feel connected to this increasingly cryptic actor. Even so, it’s common knowledge that he hasn’t always taken these visits well. He’s created fictions about himself, as if in some amusement, in order to break the confines of reality. It’s in the most gossiped exchanges that he’s proven to have broken the mold. He’s no longer being controlled by media outlets trying to compete against a half-dozen major new releases that month. It all seems trivial the longer one questions whether his infamous story of watching a clown die in a car explosion while promoting Water for Elephants (2011) was serious because, to be blunt, it’s an easy story to exploit.
One has to believe that Pattinson gets a rush out of misdirection, breaking free of the mundanity that press junkets carry. It’s why, beyond any film he’s promoting, there’s a vitality to watching him enter those rooms and bend reality over and over, discovering that he’s figured out how to control the situation better than anyone else. He understands the core function of media without being an absolute trainwreck. To do so while fueling a half-dozen of A24’s more arthouse fare only speaks to a developed charisma that’s always on display, but never forces him to show all of his cards.
That may be why he’s the perfect fit to play journalist Chris Hansen. In its own bizarro way, To Catch a Predator was about dominance over the media, pushing journalism past the six o’clock hour and turning it into salacious, must-see event TV. The approach also reflected a changing landscape, where criminals had easier access to prey through AIM chatrooms and Myspace. The world may have been more connected to share ideas, but the vision of Hansen presented in Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime (2026) is also morally dubious, where it was easier to fake your identity and, depending on personal values, the vigilante justice (often only triumphed by fictional figures like Batman) was icky even in the most desired of circumstances. Was it right for a small team to play judge, jury, and executioner? In this case, it makes perfect sense. However, where would the line be drawn for more trivial disagreements further down the line? Given that ABC was accused of making their own knock-off premise called What Would You Do?, it’s easy to see reality being infected by bad-faith actors.
Debate will continue until the end of time over what Robert Pattinson’s best performance will be. However, it is doubtful that there will be one that feels more transparent than his Chris Hansen. This isn’t to suggest that his press junkets are acts meant to humiliate his subjects on a national scale, but rather that he shares the addictive need for control. He can’t fade into the conventions, much like how Hansen needed to dive headfirst into uncomfortable subject matter. When either Hansen (fact or fiction) walks into a room with his silky smooth voice, there is a haunting gravitas that makes you feel lesser. The recurring line in Primetime, “You see how this looks, right?” comes across like a fever dream for the cornered criminals. Hansen has transcended the mere role of moral high ground and now sounds like the subconscious personified, making it inevitable that his targets crumble under their own guilt. All the while, he stares deliberately into their eyes with an Orwellian confidence, as if he knows things about them that will never come to light, especially with the belief that To Catch a Predator can’t break that many taboos on the basic channels.
The reason Pattinson feels one with Hansen isn’t just because of this perverse need to render their targets helpless. It’s in understanding the division between media and reality, or what existed by that time. Hansen, like Pattinson, teamed up with actors to lure his targets into vulnerable positions. The story starts the same year as the popularity of Borat (2006), which humiliated an unsuspecting public through decoys. Whereas Sacha Baron Cohen was praised for finding depth in the American diaspora, Hansen was fighting for the moral code with hot new tech. Like everything else on TV, the boundaries needed to be pushed further and, to get ratings, meant often the risk of exploitation or shortcutting. Virtuous intent aside, there was a profound embarrassment in possibly losing viewership that night to a polar bear on Lost. Yes, that TV show Lost.
This is where the heart of the performance becomes something greater. Pattinson has long championed arthouse cinema, and thus is no stranger to risk. Even so, the guilt he expresses in Primetime as the real-life Jeff Zucker chastises him for not being perfect counterprogramming to Damon Lindelof’s quixotic drama has this incredible comedy buried underneath tragic desperation. It sounds ridiculous to compare public atrocities to fantastical journeys, yet that’s Hansen’s dilemma. There is a push between self-importance in sacrificing team safety to be seen as more significant than a fictional story full of special effects. How are these the least bit comparable?
While Pattinson has risen somewhat to the status of a bankable star, one has to imagine that he holds this existential crisis every time the art that means the most critically misses the mark. Somewhere under a jovial presentation is the ongoing crisis of making art for the masses or the underseen auteur. For example, does High Life (2019), making less than $3 million at the box office, while the more ephemeral Shazam! (2019) outgrossed it by over 122 times the profit bother him? It’s ridiculous to say, but at the same time, one is striving for more profound ideas while the other is a lighthearted romp. Does one succumb to conventionality or just get even weirder in the hopes that the world catches on soon enough?
The second half of Primetime emphasizes a quest not dissimilar to “Moby Dick,” where Hansen chases a self-described “white whale,” which will place To Catch a Predator into the hall of infamy and make sure nobody forgets the name. The potential risk and debasement is where the discomfort sets in, where the pressure weighs on Hansen as the cracks start to appear in his persona. He starts to doubt himself and can’t simply restate the script because of one bad encounter. Why should he let one bad review ruin his entire livelihood? As the public understands his game, what can he do to remain elusive? The criminals become harder to chase and, ultimately, the economics of running a show butt up against the disappointing results.
Hansen is, ostensibly, an actor trying to control his environment. Playing with so many uncontrolled variables can only lead to snap judgments and bursts of irrationality. Even if Pattinson’s mannerisms are influenced by a real person, it’s hard not to see some resonance in his own frustration with possibly being seen as a failure, someone who lost touch with their values for the sake of dishonest but lucrative results. It may be why he often feels the need to pull influence from the strangest of corners, such as imitating James Woods’ performance from Casino (1995) in The Odyssey (2026). There is a grasping-at-straws quality where he’s clearly working towards some inner sense of fulfillment even during the safest bets. He cannot settle. He must keep chasing something bigger, if just to make himself feel alive in an industry where it’s easy to coast on basic star power and charisma.
Primetime is about many things, mostly regarding the Mid-2000s obsession with voyeuristic media and the moral judgment the impersonal distance gives every viewer. It’s a question of whether there’s value in trusting one man to symbolize the moral high ground, or if he too is a flawed manipulator. Does one wrong leading to justice negate its scuzziness? There are questions of reality and trusting one another, or if the loss of innocence will turn the public on each other… and if so, how much of that is the studio’s fault for pushing further into depravity under a reconstituted lens? Even in a world where the public can be trusted to make their own decisions, how do they not just corner any opponent and call it justice?
Art has always been speculative of its ability to change the world, and it’s undeniable that Pattinson recognizes his place in that industry. Having risen to fame with Twilight (2008), he was given more of a pass than most to follow his whims, to attempt to break free of his social contract and repurpose the truth. He may not be chasing bad guys around in his spare time, but there is a sense while watching Primetime that he’s unveiling a thin line separating his fictional read from deeper insecurities. What would happen if the public suddenly found his stories boring? What if he needed to push himself into more debased work just to prove his accolades? It’s true that what he does often has fewer consequences on our everyday life than To Catch a Predator, but there’s still the search for control, to right the wrongs and improve the narrative to your liking. If Pattinson makes a film that more nakedly reflects how I feel he sees his professional life, I’ll be surprised. I won’t, however, doubt he’ll try to sell me on it in the most ridiculous ways known to man. Like this movie, I’ll probably be too hypnotized by his delivery to know what’s real anymore.
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