Issue 28: Robert Pattinson’s Weirdo Dispatches From Lockdown

"I don’t know how this is going to work. My phone broke, the internet broke, everything broke. I’m like, “What, why is everything updating, and how do you stop it updating?”"

One of my absolute favourite things in pop culture is when a conventionally handsome actor who the film industry tried to shoehorn into leading man roles decides to reinvent themselves as a goblin-esque character actor weirdo. I fall for it every single time, dammit. Why be Tom Cruise when you can be Willem Dafoe (not that Cruise is not-weird, but you get my point.) Sebastian Stan has graduated to his freaky little guy era recently. Nicolas Hoult has eagerly rejected stoicism for horny mania and snivelling weasels. I feel like Timothee Chalamet could get weirder – see Bones and All – but he’s stuck on the “future Leo” path right now. And then there’s Robert Pattinson, the former sparkling vampire who took all of his Twilight money and decided to live as a feral rodent with a penchant for unhinged accents.

When Pattinson was announced as the next Bruce Wayne, many wondered if it was a step backward for him. Why would he want to rejoin the nightmarish cycle of a film franchise when he had the freedom to do whatever the hell he desired? But Batman has always been a weirdo, and the best performances of Gotham’s biggest emo understood that (Michael Keaton, come to the front!) So, why not let RPattz become RBattz?

Filming for The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, began in January 2020. A couple of months later... well, you know what happened. Lockdown left Hollywood in tatters. The majority of ongoing productions were forced to shut down for at least six months. Pattinson was stuck in London, unsure of when he'd be back to work on a physically taxing role with sky-high expectations placed upon his shoulders. Nobody would have blamed him if he, like all of us, had gone a little crazy. But the pasta recipe? That's a tougher sin to forgive.

GQ. "Robert Pattinson: A Dispatch From Isolation." May 12, 2020. Zach Baron.

(Image via GQ.)

(Read the profile here.)

Maybe Pattinson was destined to be the inadvertent representative of our early lockdown-era mental panic. At least in those first couple of months when we steeped ourselves in the novelty of staying at home to avoid the sheer earth-quaking nightmare of a murderous pandemic. Nobody was equipped for this. This piece finds Pattinson in a London apartment rented for him and his girlfriend, Suki Waterhouse, by Warner Bros., with production of The Batman on pause for the foreseeable future. “I almost immediately totally lost all sense of time,” Pattinson said. Relatable. He's worried about things like food, internet access, and getting back to work. His laptop doesn't work properly. "It’s possible that you couldn’t build a person more suited to this experience," says GQ. RPattz will do fine, guys! He told Claire Denis that he's coping. He definitely won’t blow up his microwave.

You do understand why Pattinson’s friends and colleagues would see him as mentally ready for the potential apocalypse. Robert Eggers, who directed him in The Lighthouse, describes him as having a “paranoid quality”, which is perfect for roles like Good Time and The Devil All the Time. "Pattinson has a generous but thoroughly chaotic energy," adds the GQ writer. You definitely get that sense when you imagine him alternating between chewing nicotine gum and drinking Coca Cola over and over, as he talks about fearing arrest if he goes on his run for too long (during lockdown in the UK, we were allowed an hour of outdoor exercise.)

(An accurate portrait of me during lockdown. Image via A24.)

Given his background as a private schoolboy and former Harry Potter actor, it would be easy for Pattinson’s image as a feral twitch-fest to feel inauthentic. It could seem performative or just part of his rebranding as a Serious Actor. For me, however, it feels very lived-in and earned. He’s twitchy but not neurotic, charming with a shambolic quality that doesn’t feel entitled or lazy. There’s nothing half-arsed about RPattz. There’s order to the chaos. “The interesting thing with Rob is, he’s slightly fucking with you,” says Christopher Nolan, who directed Pattinson in Tenet. “But he’s also being disarmingly honest. It’s sort of both things at once." That's certainly the read I've always gotten from him.

In this GQ piece, he’s emotionally candid but still keeps his private life close to his chest (wouldn’t you if you lived through the Twilight years? OH, should I do a piece on the KStew cheating drama and how icky that got?) He’s also kind about his Twi-tenure. Yes, he spent that entire press tour being its biggest troll but he also knows there’s no point in beating a dead horse. Of the films, he says, "I think in a lot of ways they seem more like sort of existential art house movies than the things that were intentionally that." That's maybe a bit generous but it's good that he never flung his teen girl films under the bus once he became "serious." That always leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

Regarding his involvement in Tenet and The Batman, Pattinson gets candid about wanting the “security” that comes with a big job. The Twilight money certainly helped him to fund those tiny indies that only critics and fanpires watched, but it doesn’t last. Says Pattinson, in a moment of real business savvy: “The problem which I was finding was, however much I loved the movies I was doing, no one sees them. And so it’s kind of this frightening thing, ’cause I don’t know how viable this is for a career… I don’t know how many people there actually are in the industry who are willing to back you without any commercial viability whatsoever.”

Pattinson also jokes about not sticking to his Batman-mandated workout during his lockup. Shout out to everyone else who found it impossible to exercise from home (look, I live in a flat and couldn’t make much noise, plus there was a pause button right there!) I still remember how truly furious some Batman bros were over Pattinson obviously screwing around over this issue. They seemed to find it offensive that a fictional character wouldn’t be as uber-muscled as an ‘80s bodybuilder, as if that physique ever made sense for a detective whose stealth is a key part of his lore. Watching The Batman, it’s clear that Pattinson took all his vitamins and did the crunches, even if he isn’t gargantuan in size. Still, I yearn for the day when we get even a sliver of body diversity in the superhero genre. My kingdom for Jack Black as Starlord.

(His accent in this movie is so ridiculous. Image via Netflix.)

Of course, whenever it comes to Pattinson interviews, one must understand that the chances are high that every word he says is total bullsh*t. He’s a troll. A damn good troll at that too. As he admits in this interview, “I liked saying sort of provocative things ’cause I thought it was funny. I get very, very uncomfortable about doing sort of earnest things.”

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When he was in the midst of Twilight mania, he gave the most hysterical interviews that practically dared people to call him out for what were, in hindsight, ridiculous claims. Remember when he claimed he asked a stalker out to lunch then just complained about his life non-stop until she left him alone? Or that bleak story about the clown death? Plenty of celebrities have told lies on talk shows to pass the time or amuse themselves. Joaquin Phoenix, a friend of Pattinson’s, is notorious for this. In her first Playbill bio, Barbra Streisand claimed she was "Born in Madagascar, reared in Rangoon," a reference to an old joke Marlon Brando made about his birthplace. SZA loves a good lie. With Pattinson, the amusement of it all wasn’t really confronted until years later, when he embraced those freakier roles more thoroughly. It was assumed he was just screwing with the Twi-hards, but I think he was less discriminatory in his targets. If you were taking anything he said seriously, that was on you.

But the biggest troll of this piece? The pasta dish. Of course, this could also just be a big set-up, with Pattinson looking to provide this profile with some good copy in the same way he would tell nonsense tales for talk-show hosts. But it’s also possible that Pattinson did make this up because he’s an insane goblin freak. Admit it, you can already hear him trying to explain to Suki Waterhouse how he would sell this to the Dolmio company.

Before we’re introduced to the magic of this culinary revelation, Pattinson is quoted as admitting to having googled instructions for cooking pasta in the microwave. Italians the world over cringed in unison. He claims he had a business idea: to make pasta a fast food regular in the same way that burgers and pizzas are. But how could you make a pasta dish that was easy, tasty, and handheld? He was so eager to make this happen that he pitched it to restaurant royalty Lele Massimini (and Massimini confirmed it to be "100 percent true.")

It's called Piccolini Cuscino, or Little Pillow. All you'll need: Breadcrumbs (but Pattinson uses cornflakes), nine slices of pre-sliced cheese, "just any sauce", and an open flame from an "incredibly large novelty lighter." Microwave your box of penne pasta in water for eight minutes. Mix together sugar and cheese. Crumble some cornflakes into this congealed mixture. Realize that foil shouldn't go in the microwave. Accidentally burn one of your latex gloves. burn the letters P and C into a hamburger bun. There are other instructions but it ends with a microwave exploding.

No, I didn’t try this for myself. I like my microwave to not be on fire. Also, I know how to cook pasta.

Chaos troll or earnest weirdo? Why not both?

(Robert watching his pasta explode. Image via A24.)

The Batman was a big hit. I remember seeing it in a sold-out screening and the audience’s murmurs of recognition every time they spotted a Scottish location (shout out to the Necropolis in Glasgow!) Since then, Pattinson has only further committed to bugf*ck weirdo performances in movies like Mickey 17 and the voice of the heron in the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. He is contracted to another Batman movie but he’s also busy with the Christopher Nolan version of The Odyssey, Lynne Ramsay’s newest drama, a spiky romantic dramedy alongside Zendaya, and Dune: Part Three. No word yet on how many of these roles will require a weird accent choice (come on, Dune, take over form Austin Butler!) He also became a father last year. That kid’s going to have amazing hair.

We talk a lot on this newsletter about how most modern celebrity profiles are dull because the subject wants to retain a tight control of their image and not give away too much about themselves. That’s understandable, even if it makes for boring copy. So, I cannot help but love Pattinson’s decision to be a chaos demon in these circumstances. I just want to see how much weirder he can go. Come on, Robert, let your freak flag fly.

Thanks for reading. You can read my work scattered across the internet. Over on Pajiba, I wrote about Season Two of With Love, Meghan, the business of being TNT (Travis and Taylor), and Serena Williams doing weight loss drug sponcon. For Paste, I wrote about The Thief and the Cobbler’s long and complicated history. I talked about the adorable rom-com Ichi the Killer for Crooked Marquee. To celebrate the remake of The Toxic Avenger, I wrote about its surprise ‘90s kids cartoon version for Den of Geek.

By the time this piece goes live, I will be in Toronto for the film festival, so stay tuned on this newsletter and over on Pajiba.com for reviews and news!

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