{"id":1046487,"date":"2026-09-06T07:28:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T07:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1046487\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T07:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T07:28:23","slug":"robert-pattinson-responds-to-chris-hansens-primetime-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1046487\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Pattinson responds to Chris Hansen\u2019s Primetime backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Robert Pattinson has responded to Chris Hansen\u2019s criticisms<\/a> of the forthcoming movie inspired by his work on To Catch a Predator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Primetime, which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival this weekend, is a psychological thriller starring the Twilight actor <\/a>as Hansen, host of the NBC Dateline hidden camera series where he would confront suspected sexual predators.<\/p>\n

Hansen\u2019s objections to the movie<\/a> were the focus of a Saturday press conference at the festival. Pattinson said he hoped that Hansen, who has previously called the project \u201cdisingenuous\u201d and \u201cexploitative,\u201d would eventually see his portrayal as a compliment. <\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, obviously I hope he likes the movie,\u201d Pattinson said, according to Variety<\/a>. \u201cI never really set out to make a movie about Chris Hansen. I would hope in some ways, like, the amount of inspiration that his character has kind of given certain people who are involved in this [film] for like years now, I hope is some kind of compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RobertRobert Pattinson will portray the former \u2018To Catch a Predator\u2019 host Chris Hansen in a forthcoming movie (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI think the more you watch a show, there\u2019s something like magnetic about his presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched a show when I was younger and I didn\u2019t even think about it. I mean, when you kind of obsessively watch it, you realize there\u2019s a strange alchemy with what\u2019s going on with the status of the show and how it was directed and how things got together and the time period.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut something he\u2019s doing is the reason why people are still talking about that show 20 years later,\u201d Pattinson continued. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s not to do necessarily solely with subject matter. I just think there was something about the show that was very groundbreaking, kind of breaking the rules of television.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen, 66, hosted To Catch a Predator for its entire run on NBC Dateline from 2004 to 2007.<\/a><\/p>\n

The show was famous for Hansen\u2019s ability to lure suspected sex predators into an on-camera confrontation. It was canceled as a result of a 2006 wrongful death lawsuit after Texas assistant district attorney Bill Conradt died by suicide during one of Hansen\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

\"PattinsonPattinson and the \u2018Primetime\u2018 cast appeared at the global world premiere for the movie at the Venice Film Festival Saturday (Getty)<\/p>\n

A24\u2019s movie, out September 25, is directed by Lance Oppenheim, and also stars Unbelievable actor Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo and singer Phoebe Bridgers<\/a> in her acting debut.<\/p>\n

Hansen was not involved in the making of the movie and has repeatedly spoken out against it.<\/p>\n

During an appearance on Dan Abrams\u2019 SiriusXM podcast on August 26, Hansen suggested that he was considering his legal options concerning Primetime.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are looking at it, Dan,\u201d Hansen said. \u201cI don\u2019t know. One guy told me, somebody who\u2019s very, very good at all this and very entrenched in entertainment law, he said, \u2018You know, you can do that, and you probably have a decent case. How much time do you want to spend doing it?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s overly dramatic,\u201d he said about the movie trailer. \u201cHow could they tell the story without having talked to anybody who was directly involved?<\/p>\n

He added that the dialogue included in the trailer \u201cnever took place in real life,\u201d saying: \u201cIt\u2019s way out there and not reflective of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt feels very exploitative to me. It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen claimed in another interview with Fox News\u2019 Jesse Watters that he was turned away from an early screening of the movie after he refused to \u201csign away my rights to my name, image and brand.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Independent has contacted A24 for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1046488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[418828,32809,63967,343040,23781,94056,22619,185,9297,1002,171,10574,12054,49257,258472,10758,1005,2219,414519,418830,418831,418827,56682,290981,3092,418829,53744,102222,178540,67,132,68,320104,30989],"class_list":["post-1046487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-83rd-venice-film-festival","tag-arrival","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-attending","tag-award","tag-bokeem-woodbine","tag-casino","tag-celebrities","tag-cityscape","tag-color-image","tag-entertainment","tag-fashion","tag-film-festival","tag-film-industry","tag-general-view","tag-guest","tag-horizontal","tag-italy","tag-lance-oppenheim","tag-lars-knudsen-film-producer","tag-merritt-wever","tag-palazzo-del-casino","tag-phoebe-bridgers","tag-photo-call","tag-photography","tag-primetime-film","tag-red-carpet-event","tag-robert-pattinson","tag-skyler-gisondo","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-venice-italy","tag-venice-film-festival"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1046488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}