Robert Pattinson reacted after Chris Hansen criticized the actor’s “overly dramatic” portrayal of him in A24’s Primetime: “I hope he likes the movie.”
Robert Pattinson is addressing Chris Hansen’s concerns.
The actor—who is starring in the upcoming A24 film Primetime, which chronicles Hansen’s controversial stint at the helm of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator—spoke out after the former TV host criticized Pattinson’s portrayal.
“Obviously, I hope he likes the movie,” Pattinson said at the Venice Film Festival press conference Sept. 5, per Variety. “There’s something electrifying about him. I would hope the amount of inspiration his character has given a lot of people for years is some kind of compliment.”
In the psychological thriller, Pattinson plays Hansen, an over ambitious journalist who sets out to catch adult men hoping to meet up with minors.
“There’s something magnetic about his presence. I watched the show when I was younger and didn’t think about it,” he added. “There’s a strange alchemy—something he’s doing is the reason people are still talking about that show 20 years later. It’s not to do solely with the subject matter. It was something about the show that was groundbreaking, but then he’s someone centering it.”
He continued, “There’s something, even after watching literally thousands of hours of it, you can’t put your finger on it.”
But Hansen—who hosted the investigative reality show from 2004 to 2007—condemned how he was depicted in the film’s trailer.
“Obviously, he has practiced imitating me, and while I think it’s overly dramatic, I think there is a pretty good imitation there in the trailer,” Hansen told Entertainment Tonight in a recent interview. “It’s not so much what I think; it’s what other people think. And you know, my wife [and] my family seem to think it’s a pretty good imitation.”
“He’s saying things I never said and doing things I never did, and that’s not who I am. I’m a nice guy, except when it comes to criminals and predators,” he added. “I think people should remember that it is a work of fiction, only based on real-life events.”
At its peak, To Catch a Predator drew over 6 million viewers per episode. However, the Dateline franchise was discontinued amid a flurry of controversies, including when William Conradt Jr., an assistant district attorney in Texas, died by suicide in 2006 upon being discovered by the sting crew.
Condradt’s sister later filed a $109 million lawsuit against NBC for his death, and the network settled for an undisclosed amount in 2008.
Hansen officially parted ways with NBC in 2013, when his contract was not renewed, before starting his podcast series Predators I’ve Caught, based on the Dateline franchise inn 2020. Now, he's urging viewers to tune in “if they want to see the real Chris Hansen.”
Until Primetime hits theaters Sept. 25, keep reading for more movies coming out soon…
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