Why Pattinson thought ‘Twilight’ was never meant for public eyes: “Her sort of sexual fantasy”
A fixture of popular culture for seemingly an age now, Robert Pattinson has tried his hand at many different genres, and most of the time, he’s found success.
Things couldn’t have started better for the actor, either. In 2005, he introduced himself to the world as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a franchise that went on to dominate Hollywood.
Yet, unlike most of those who starred in the Harry Potter movies, Pattinson would quickly move away from JK Rowling’s creation and gradually carve out a space for himself that is much more revered than anyone could have foreseen when he broke out as the fresh-faced and well-spoken Diggory all those years ago.
Since then, Pattinson has worked with the celebrated filmmaking duo the Safdie brothers on their acclaimed thriller Good Time, starred opposite Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers’ A24 modern classic The Lighthouse, featured in Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending blockbuster Tenet, and then fucking became Batman in 2022!
For all of Robert Pattinson’s recent brilliance, he can’t escape the fact that the franchise that played a significant role in his becoming a pop culture heavyweight is The Twilight Saga. The cringe-inducing films are based on Stephenie Meyer’s four fantasy novels about the late teenager Bella Swan, who falls in love with the 104-year-old vampire Edward Cullen, played by Pattinson. According to Meyer, the idea for the plot came to her in 2003 when she dreamt about a human girl and a vampire who loved her but still wanted her blood.
As is well-known, the movies are unashamedly over the top, which Pattinson is acutely aware of. When speaking to E! after the first movie, Twilight, was released in 2008, the actor commented that it was almost as if the book wasn’t supposed to be published and likened it to reading Stephenie Meyer’s personal “sexual fantasy”.
He said, “When I read it, I was convinced that Stephenie was convinced that she was Bella. It was like it was a book that wasn’t supposed to be published, like reading her — her sort of sexual fantasy.”
He then asserted that reading the book convinced him that Meyer was “completely mad” and wholly in love with her work of fiction. “Especially when she says that it was based on a dream, and it’s like, ‘Oh, then I had a dream about this really sexy guy’ and she just writes this book about it,” he continued. “I was just convinced that this woman is mad, she’s completely mad, and she’s in love with her own fictional creation.”
Later, when speaking to Variety in 2020, some eight years after the franchise concluded, Pattinson reflected and conveyed another hint of unease at being a part of it. He said, “It’s a weird story, Twilight. It’s not just like – it’s strange how people responded a lot to it. I guess the books are very romantic, but at the same time, it’s not like The Notebook romantic.”
In the years since, Pattinson hasn’t been shy about voicing his issues with the Twilight franchise. During an interview with W Magazine in 2017, he pointed out the ridiculous inaccuracies that flowed through the films. “It’s nuts,” he said. “I had to give her a cesarean by chewing through a placenta. I don’t know the medical, how it works, but there was definitely chewing through something,” he added. “No, it’s wild. Once you got it in your head you’re like, ‘Oh, this is just the thing for little girls. And then, like, it’s difficult to get past.”
Going one step further, a year later, Pattinson told Variety that he “stopped mentally progressing around the time when I started doing those movies”.
