As Breaking Dawn Part 1 arrives on DVD we get the low down on what’s next for Robert Pattinson
How did you find your last day on set, sad, happy?
Robert Pattinson: The last day in Canada was semi-miserable: we did two weeks of night shoots and it was freezing cold and it was horrible. But the actual last day in St. Thomas, in the Caribbean, was pretty amazing. The one time we had to shoot in nice weather, it was literally the last day of the shoot, and we were shooting on the beach and were just making out in the sea all night. That was the last day, so I was like, “That was not too bad!” It was a nice little send-off.
Was it a big party? What was the feeling on set?
Robert Pattinson: It was nice. The very last day was really nice. In Canada, on that last day, there was 120 people on that last scene, so it was stress right up until the last second, but in the Caribbean, it was just me and Kristen, we had done everything, we hardly had anything to shoot, it was just a couple of extra bits, and so it was really nice and everybody just stayed and watched the sun rise. It was really beautiful. It was a nice end to it.
Are you sad that it’s all over now?
Robert Pattinson: I don’t know yet. I feel like I have been in a whirlwind for so long that I don’t really know. I feel like I have been doing it for years constantly, even though I have done other movies in between, because whenever you do and promote or talk about another movie, you’re always talking about <Twilight>, so it is kind of constant. But I don’t know. Maybe in a year or so. I know when the last one has come out, it will be, but I know right now I have another year of basically doing <Twilight> stuff.
Do you look forward to the hype all being over and you can get back to doing other things?
Robert Pattinson: Yeah, but it’s always a good thing to have a bit of hype, especially nowadays. But I don’t know. I will be interested to see how people perceive me in a couple of years, because it seems as though people have been talking about the same stuff about me for about three years now, so I am wondering how long that will go on for. But I don’t really know how to predict anything.
How did you prepare for Edward and Bella becoming parents in this film? Did you draw on anything from your own childhood?
Robert Pattinson: Not really. No-one really knows how to be a father when you first begin – there’s no way to prepare for it. And it’s very easy to react to holding a baby, especially when the baby is looking like a newborn and you have just delivered it – it’s very simple, as it’s just crying in your hands, so you end up being very careful with it and stuff. But it is strange when Mackenzie (Foy) starts playing Renesmee, as you suddenly have to think, “My daughter is now 11. It’s two months after she is born and she can speak.” So that was a complicated thing to play. But it’s a fantasy movie, so I guess you just go along with it. It is the ultimate fantasty, I guess, to some people, that you can avoid all the annoying parts of having a kid, if they’re already fending for themselves. It’s like having a puppy. Just leave it alone and thank you very much.
Trust me, it’s nothing like having a puppy.
Robert Pattinson: That’s what I keep saying in other interviews that, “It’s just like raising a dog, it’s the same thing, you’ve just got to leave it alone and tell it to go to the toilet outside.”
The fourth book is very different from the others, especially with the sex scenes – the first three books are very chaste. How was that to film?
Robert Pattinson: It’s funny when people talk about the sex scenes in the book, because there aren’t actually any sex scenes in the book, it’s all people’s imagination. So when they think, “Oh, this is so hardcore,” it actually almost fades to black every single time, and it just shows little bits of the aftermath.
Really, the book is the best example of how to keep something censored but still be erotic or whatever, because you are playing totally on people’s imaginations. Like the thing with the feathers, they don’t mention anything apart from the fact that there are feathers afterwards, but that’s why all the <Twilight> fans are so fixated on the feathers: “They’ve got to show the feathers in the movie!” It’s all their imagination, all their fantasies about the story are based on that one image, but the whole sex scene is totally in their own heads.
I guess that’s the only scary thing about doing it in the movie, because you have to show something, you can’t fade to black – if you did a fade to black in the movie, people would go insane. I don’t know, it’s strange, trying to do anything that’s a singular event that everyone is expecting, but at the end of the day, with sex, watching some other people have sex is never going to be that spectacular – hopefully it will be kind of good. It’s a strange thing when there is so much hype about it, so that you’re like, “God I hope this lives up to it.”
So were you a little nervous about the reception of this film?
Robert Pattinson: Definitely. I like it when you get to the end of the series… when the book came out, I was like, “Wow, she really broke the whole box! She’s not even thinking outside the box any more.” She went all out in the last one. It’s such an incredibly bizarre storyline and it all kind of works as well. It was really brave. It’s nice to have something where each one of the movies beforehand, they follow a vaguely similar pattern and this one is just, “Huh?” It’s almost a different genre of movie. So hopefully it will be interesting. And Bill (Condon) is a very different director as well.
Edward is obviously very protective of Bella all the way through the books, so how can you relate to that total protectiveness that he has? Who do you feel protective of in your life?
Robert Pattinson: I guess just anyone close to me. It’s funny as well, becoming famous and stuff, that sometimes people try and bring other people into it, they start talking about your friends or your associations and stuff – it hasn’t really happened to me which is great – but that is the one time that I feel like I really have to do something about it. But there is nothing you can really do about it, so you have to just talk to them and hope your relationship with all the people around you is going to be fine. I guess if people said anything about my family or my friends, I would feel protective about them.
That has come hand-in-hand with your fame, but what is the best thing that fame has brought you?
Robert Pattinson: You just get to go down a completely different road. I am living a life that I never really knew existed. You can delay being an adult for quite a while. But it’s fun. You get to meet really interesting people, and there are very few jobs where almost everyone in the industry loves their job, and it’s nice to go to work every day when people are really excited about it and think they are making something great.
Are you looking forward to the moment that all this fan attention dies down?
Robert Pattinson: The only annoying thing about that, in terms of a career, is that whenever you get big, it seems like anyone who gets known for anything, you have an equal number of haters and detractors, whereas if you never really get big, you never have any. I remember, before <Twilight> that if there was something on the internet, every single comment would be positive, whereas when you have image over-saturation a little bit, then it drives people crazy for some reason, I don’t know why. That’s the only annoying thing. But also the great thing about <Twilight> fans is that they are all very, very vocal and they are very protective about stuff, so you always have an army of people defending you.
It’s like a sports team.
Robert Pattinson: Yeah, it’s like a team, that’s exactly what it is with celebrities: people have fun hating on them and people have fun supporting them, it’s just the way it is. It’s really strange.
Do you ever look up stuff on the internet? Or do you totally avoid reading anything about yourself?
Robert Pattinson: Sometimes, mainly for practical purposes, like if you feel like you have said something stupid, you go and check to see what the backlash is about, to see if I have to do another interview to dissipate that! It’s always mainly just damage control all the time.
In hindsight, what do you think the importance or the value of the Twilight franchise will be, looking back at it? What has it brought to our society, as it is so influential to the youth?
Robert Pattinson: I think anything that gets young people reading is one thing that is pretty important. That was the same thing when I did Harry Potter: it’s kind of amazing, but Harry Potter completely changed everything. I don’t remember kids talking about books, and the young adult genre was so much smaller before Harry Potter, and things like Twilight and Harry Potter just exploded. And also, in terms of the movies, doing things for a female audience – that changed things as well.
I don’t think it has really changed things yet, but it made people in the industry aware that women – just solely women – are a legitimate audience for movies, which in a strange sort of way, is good for guys as well, because I think the industry got convinced that the only people who go to the cinema were teenage boys, so every single movie that came out was directed towards them, but if you start making movies for women, it will eventually dissipate into just making dramas again – just non-action movies – because people think they are girly movies, and they are the movies that I like!
Check Movies.ie on Friday and our Facebook page here for some exciting Twilight competitions!
TWILIGHT BREAKING DAWN – PART 1 is out on DVD and Blu-Ray from March 12th