Why should stars suffer alone when they can bring their equally famous friends down with them? In an interview with PR-Inside.com, Pattinson’s Harry Potter co-star Rupert Grint revealed that he was “stuck reading Twilight,” in September 2008, the result of losing a bet with the most wanted man in Forks. Pattinson—possibly desperate for a companion in suffering—texted Grint to see how much he had read, and Grint, after being informed there was more than one book, seemed crestfallen: “No, really, are you serious? I thought there was just this one book?”
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No doubt worn down, and possibly deaf from overexposure to high-decibel screams, Pattinson’s restraint in discussing the series seemed totally gone by fall of 2008. “When you read the book, it's like, 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line is like that,” he told Empire in an interview. So what was Rob’s unique insight into the character? “He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there.” We’re guessing Rob is really a “Team Jacob” guy.
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Still unfettered by the traditional constraints of being the star of a multimillion-dollar franchise, amateur book critic Robert Pattinson let E! Online know his reservations about the movie’s source material in November 2008. “When I read it I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it was like it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published. It was like reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream and it was like, 'Oh I've had this dream about this really sexy guy,' and she just writes this book about it,” he told the Web site before the movie’s premiere. “Some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced, like, 'This woman is mad. She's completely mad and she's in love with her own fictional creation.' And sometimes you would feel uncomfortable reading this thing.” But probably not as uncomfortable as a Twilight publicist watching the interview.
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Where Pattinson’s reaction to the funhouse of Twilight fame seems to have been fear and despondency, Kristen Stewart’s seemed to be anger—some of it a little bit sadistic. When Cinematical asked her in November 2008 if she ever thought about quitting Twilight to freak people out, the actress responded, “Oh, God, yeah. I’ve totally had the thought; it would be so easy for me to send so many hundreds of girls into a frenzy.” (Probably, Kristen, you can send some into a frenzy just by saying that.) She continued: “It took a long time for me to admit that I was too bogged down by the first book to admit to these girls that I wasn’t as…” (Wasn’t as… Invested? Obsessed?) “I’m just as obsessed as they are; I read it from an entirely different perspective and had to live it for three months.”
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If Kristen didn’t make her point by joking about how funny it would be to quit the most beloved series since Harry Potter, she hammered home her intentions by calling fans “thoughtless” and “psychotic.” Talking to Nylon about the publicity tour that Pattinson likened to being at the gates of Hell, Kristen said, “Anywhere we’d go for Twilight was a psychotic situation. The sound was deafening, and it’s thoughtless, as well.” Well, didn’t she at least relish the opportunity to connect with fans and the media? “You get a slew of all these bullshit questions like, ‘What’s it like to kiss a vampire?’ and ‘How much do you love Robert?’ Then you’ll get one that’s actually real, but you’re like, ‘No, I can’t right now, I can’t even consider [it].”
Rob Pattinson presented an Oscar during February’s ceremony with Amanda Seyfried, and not his on-screen love (and off-screen “friend”). Where was K-Stew? Her dad John Stewart said that his daughter would present at the Oscars, “When it’s a great movie, not just one that makes a lot of money.” Wait—is he saying that Twilight isn’t a—oh. I see now.
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Even if the Stewart family doesn’t think of Twilight as a “great movie”—and even if Kristen hadn’t actually read all the books, last we checked—Perez Hilton’s least-favorite actress still thinks the story has value. “Edward is actually a really good parallel to fame,” she told Fabulous this month. “As a vampire, he has a sad, desolate life—fame is the same.” Well, Kristen, not exactly the same. “I don’t want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie,” she continued. “Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable.”
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