Robert Pattinson laughed off any continued hatred against the “Twilight” franchise in a translated interview for GQ Spain. The actor debuted as the vampire Edward Cullen in 2008’s “Twilight,” which launched a $3.3 billion movie franchise across five movies and turned Pattinson and co-star Kristen Stewart into global superstars.
“I love that people keep telling me, ‘Man, ‘Twilight’ ruined the vampire genre,’” Pattinson said in the interview. “Are you still stuck on that shit? How can you be sad about something that happened almost 20 years ago? It’s crazy.”
When Pattinson last spoke to GQ in 2022, he revealed that he wanted the original “Twilight” movie to be as edgy and emo as possible. He was 21 years old at the time and feeling young adult angst, but his vision for the movie didn’t sit right with the studio.
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“I wanted to make it as arty as possible,” Pattinson said at the time. “We had this strange tension where the studio was scared to make things a little bit too emo and stuff. I thought that was the only way to play it. I spent so much time [on set] infuriated… I can’t believe the way I was acting half the time.”
Pattinson remembered his managers visiting the “Twilight” set one day and encouraging him to smile more and not play things so seriously. His managers told him point blank, “You’ll be fired by the end of the day if you don’t stop doing what you’re doing.”
“Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke revealed on “Happy Sad Confused” in 2023 that the film studio also questioned if Pattinson had good enough looks to play Edward Cullen.
“When he came over to my house, he had black bangs for hair and was kind of out of shape because he was hanging out at the pub all the time,” Hardwicke recalled of auditioning Pattinson. “After we did the fun auditions [with Kristen] at my house for a couple hours, then I looked the next morning at all the footage I shot and recorded and I thought it worked not just in person but it works on screen. I had to be sure. Of course in person I just got carried away, but you have to be sure it translates [to the screen].”
“Then I sent it to Summit and he went over to meet them,” she continued. “They called me back and go, ‘Do you think you can make this guy look good?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Did you see his cheekbones? We’re doing a makeover on the hair and everything and he’s going to start working out and he’s going to be gorgeous.’ But they didn’t believe it at first. He like walked over there with a stained shirt or something. It was Rob.”
Pattinson was not what the studio was envisioning for Edward, nor was he what fans were expecting. When the “Twilight” movie was announced, fan casting leaned heavily in favor of a pre-Superman Henry Cavill. After all, franchise author Stephenie Meyer said publicly that Cavill was at the top of her wish list. Hardwicke, however, thought the actor looked too old to play a high school student. She was able to convince the studio to go with Pattinson, and the rest is history.