No one does a press tour like Robert Pattinson
Two uncommissioned ramblings this week, both from the celebosphere! I do hope you enjoy. And if you do, please tell your friends, your parents, your dog. Ask them to subscribe, too, while you’re at it.
No one does a press tour like Robert Pattinson
Robert Pattinson is out doing the rounds for his upcoming film alongside Zendaya, The Drama, and it is, as always, a joy to behold. Indeed, I have come to look forward to the press tours of his films more than the films themselves, as he is truly one of the great handsome weirdos of our generation.
Affable and seemingly game for anything, he’s always got an amused look on his face, and seems perennially in danger of collapsing into laughter. I’ve interviewed a lot of actors in the past, and I can tell you, this is not often the case. A good example of it is when he had his colours done during the promotion of Mickey 17. He’s a winter, in case you were wondering. I’ve watched this video 10494104910 times.
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He’s also always – and I mean always – negging Twilight. Rather than biting the hand that feeds him, so to speak, he does it in a light-hearted way too, that shows he just sees it in a totally unserious way. During The Drama promo, he and Zendaya were asked if they were Team Edward or Team Jacob, to which he pulled a face and said, “No one was Team Jacob, that was a marketing thing!”
Indeed, his seemingly total lack of media training is supremely endearing. Most of the time, he seems to just say whatever comes into his head – no matter how unhinged it is. He’s even admitted to telling tall tales, just for his own amusement and to spice things up a bit – including that he never washes his hair, that he took his stalker out for dinner and that put her off him, and that he used to be a women’s hand model. Oh, and that he once witnessed a clown dying at the circus when its toy car exploded.
If I were to psychoanalyse Pattinson’s interview style, I’d say that it’s an attempt to keep us at a bit of a distance. After all, if you’re never telling the truth, or being earnest or sincere, then you’re not really letting anyone in. With the madness of the Twilight fandom and the frenzy surrounding his first public relationship with Kristen Stewart, that’s totally understandable. And I for one love it.
Some of my favourite Pattinson quotes include:
“Lots of people tell me I smell like a crayon… Like I’m embalmed.”
“I 100% used to smell exactly like a crayon.”
“I have extraordinarily heavy saliva. It’s funny, I noticed it the other day. If I try to spit, I can only get it about a foot.”
“I can weirdly turn on and off my sense of smell. I think I have a scent dyslexia, where I think something smells like something that no one else thinks it does.”
“Something I was trying to find for years was to do a ballet movie. And then my agent was like, ‘Why? Do you know how to ballet?’ I’m like, ‘No.’ … I think there’s a ballerina inside me.”
And to end, I will share that my biggest regret in life is that 10 years ago I was at a party in Los Angeles for the launch of Suki Waterhouse’s handbag line (I’d interviewed her for Grazia), and because I was tired after being at Coachella beforehand, left the party early — with everyone I was with migrating to Robert Pattinson’s house for the afters. I might never get over it.
And also… Sydney Sweeney is more than just great tits
I found myself feeling sorry for Sydney Sweeney this week. Before you @ me, I know she might or might not be a bit MAGA. I know she has signed off on some deplorable decisions when it comes to what she will put her name to (see: those eugenics-adjacent jeans/genes ads). And I know she’s got truly heinous taste in men (see: Scooter Braun).
But my word, has any other woman in history faced such a consistent backlash for the victim-less crime of having great tits?
This weekend, the 28-year-old actress suffered a drive-by from 93-year-old Hitchcock blonde, Kim Novak, who she was billed to play in a now stalled biopic about her ill-fated romance with Sammy Davis Jr. Speaking to The Times, Novak said: “There’s no way it wouldn’t be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time. She was totally wrong to play me.” And, worst of all: “She sticks out so much above the waist.” Ouch.
Much has been written about the world’s seeming fascination with politicising Sweeney’s boobs. The conservative right are particularly obsessed with them. A Canadian right-wing newspaper ran a story with the headline: “Are Sydney Sweeney’s breasts double-D harbingers of the death of woke?”, while The Spectator characterised Sweeny’s rising popularity as “the giggling blonde with an amazing rack… a creature shamed to the brink of extinction”. On the flip side, her completely sheer Christian Cowan dress which she wore to the Variety 2025 Power of Women event last December rubbed conservative commentator Megyn Kelly up the wrong way, so she clearly can’t win ‘em all.
What’s sad is that Sweeney’s great rack seems to also be leading to others completely underestimating her talents. Before Novak’s comments, we had film producer Carol Baum, who quite randomly declared the actress was “not pretty” and “couldn’t act”. Commenters on the first trailer from the final season of Euphoria were quick to snipe that Sweeney was “playing herself” as her character Cassie is shown to be a cam-girl.
This all despite the fact that Sweeney has shown again and again that she has range as an actress. Indeed, since her breakout in Euphoria, she’s been a privileged and intellectual college sophomore on The White Lotus, the real life female boxing champion Christy Martin in Christy, and a tormented nun in horror film Immaculate – alongside appearing in box office hits like The Housemaid and Anyone But You. Yet it seems as if some in Hollywood are still keen to minimise her to mere sex symbol status.
Of course, she’s lent into the discourse too, gamely making boob jokes on SNL and taking advantage of her natural assets with a lingerie line called SYRN. And I’ve already addressed how problematic a lot of what she does is. But does that really mean people can continue to reduce her to mere Double Ds?