Taking time out from their scheduled appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, two of the film’s stars, 22-year-old Brit Robert Pattinson (best known for playing Cedric in the Harry Potter films) and 29-year-old redhead Rachelle Lefevre (who plays evil vamp Victoria), spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about playing vampires already beloved by legions of fans, doing wire work, and how best to approach kissing scenes.
MediaBlvd Magazine> For those who are unfamiliar with the book, can you give a brief description of each of your characters?
Rachelle Lefevre> I play Victoria, who is an evil, nomadic vampire, and the mate of James (Cam Gigandet). About the middle of the movie, the two of us, together with Laurent (Edi Gathegi), discover Edward and Bella, and James becomes obsessed with Bella. As his mate, I make it my mission to track them and, as a result, we make their lives, which are already difficult, pretty much a living hell, for the rest of the film.
Robert Pattinson> My character is Edward Cullen, and he’s a semi-reluctant vampire, who doesn’t really know why he even exists. He’s 108 years old, maybe 109. He’s stuck in the body of a 17-year-old school kid, pretending to be a human. He’s always thinking, “I either want to die, or become a human because just being a vampire is so utterly pointless.” And then, he finds this mortal girl, Bella, and initially wants to devour her, but it turns into an all-consuming love for her. It’s just very difficult for a vampire to be in love with someone he wants to eat, all the time. The story is about the problems, the trials and the tribulations which occur when a vampire falls in love with a normal girl that he wants to kill.
MediaBlvd> Don’t you know an immortal can’t fall in love with a mortal?
Robert> It’s true.
MediaBlvd> Does it end badly?
Robert> No. Well, that’s arguable. Edward knows that he is a vampire and that he always will be, and that Bella will always be a mortal, until she’s dead, so there’s not a huge amount he can do about it. But, it’s a essentially a pretty happy situation, at the end.
MediaBlvd> Had you read the book before being cast?
Robert> I hadn’t, no. I read them after my screen test. I’d never even heard of them before. Then, we were doing the movie and it got exponentially bigger and bigger and bigger, and everybody knew about it, so it was kind of strange and unexpected.
MediaBlvd> When you did finally read the book, did you think, “Well, I’m really beautiful, so I’d be good at this”? How do you live up to the expectations with the character description of Edward in the book?
Robert> The casting people talked to me and said, “Read the book.” I just thought, “This is really dumb. It’s just so pointless, even going up for it,” which is what a lot of the fans said. After I initially got cast, it was like, “He wasn’t even on the short list!” It was really left-field casting. It is kind of weird. I spent a long time thinking, “How can I take the whole beautiful thing as an interpretation?” I realized that it’s just Bella saying that he’s so beautiful, all the time, and she’s in love with him and obsessed with him, so he could be a piece of cheese and she’d say the same thing.
MediaBlvd> Stephenie said that, when she was on set, watching your performance as Edward, it was just like the image in her head. Did you have conversations with her, about the character, to make sure you were on the right track?
Robert> With a lot of the stuff in Twilight, it’s very difficult to see what Edward is thinking. He’s always hiding things from Bella. When I read the unfinished manuscript of Midnight Sun, which is from Edward’s perspective, that changed things and helped things a bit. I just tried to think, “If you’d been bitten by some guy, when you were unconscious, and then, suddenly you wake up and you’re eternal, and you have super-strength and super-speed, and you want to kill people all the time and drink their blood, when you were a normal 17-year-old guy before, and you then three days later, you’re completely messed up, and you go off and kill 50 people, it’s like, ‘Oops!’” I tried to think, “What is that?,” as a character, rather than thinking that this is a vampire, right from the beginning. I was thinking that he’s just a normal guy who got bitten by someone.
MediaBlvd> Victoria has more to do in the following books. Did you read the other books to help understand your character?
Rachelle> Oh, yeah, definitely. I had to. The three books were already out there, and so, my thought was, “What if I make a choice that, just because it’s not in Twilight, it doesn’t mean it’s not in the third book? I could make the wrong choice.” Millions and millions of people have read these books, so you get a little bit terrified. You’re like, “I have to take this really seriously,” because people love it so much.” Also, once I’d read the first book, I knew that, whether or not I got cast, I was going to read the other books. Definitely, I had to follow the through-line.
MediaBlvd> Had you been a vampire fan prior to this?
Robert> I wasn’t really a massive vampire fan, or anything. I like the idea of them, and I like the way traditional vampires move. It’s nice to play that. I’m not really the most athletic of people, so I’m better with the slow movements. But, the vampires in Twilight are nothing like other vampires. They don’t even really look like vampires. I kind of look like a vampire in the poster.
Rachelle> In Stephenie’s world, you have to find your character first and then go, “Who was I before, and how would I be, as a result of this virus that I got?” If you work, just from starting with the vampire, it’s all surface. It’s not anything. It’s like showing up somewhere and telling somebody what you do for a living, and being judged on that. It’s just a name, just a title. We all worked really hard to figure out who we were, within the confines of that world, and then just added the vampire on top.
Robert> It’s much more tragic as well. Superman is not looked at as a tragic figure at all, but vampires are because they’re human first. In Twilight, Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), who’s the head of the clan, only turns people into vampires from his own guilt, when they’re already about to die. They’re virtually always unconscious, when he does it, so they don’t really have a choice. And then, they wake up. So, it’s a good thing and a bad thing, at the same time. The only reason they really respect Carlisle is because he is kind of a saint. He’s never killed anyone, but everyone else has, apart from Alice.
MediaBlvd> Who are your favorite vampires, from either movies or books?
Rachelle> Hands down, Gary Oldman in Dracula. It’s not my favorite vampire movie, but he’s definitely the sexiest, most intense Dracula.
Robert> I like the original Nosferatu, Max Schreck. He’s amazing. He has an amazing face. I thought that was really cool.
MediaBlvd> Did you do a lot of research on vampires?
Robert> Not on vampires, really. I guess it’s easy to make it cliched. There’s so many hundreds of thousands of vampire movies. In this story, they’re not really conventional vampires. They don’t really look like vampires, and they don’t die in the sun. Every little characteristic of vampires is just abandoned. I was trying to do it in as basic a way as possible. You just get bitten by somebody, and then you’re a vampire and you live forever, and you’re super-strong and stuff.
MediaBlvd> How do they die then, in Twilight?
Rachelle> You have to rip them apart, into a million little pieces, and then you have to burn them. And, if you don’t burn them, all the pieces rejoin. They actually crawl towards each other. It’s very disgusting. In Stephenie’s world, there are no stake through the heart. There’s none of that. You literally have to tear them to shreds and burn them into dust, so they can no longer rejoin. We definitely tried to be vampires, and tried to have a cohesive unit of a world, so we would all be the same kind of vampires, but we worked mostly on finding our characters. In Stephenie’s world, it’s more than just being a vampire because you’re still in this world. It’s not some other universe where everybody’s different. There are human beings, and we live among them, so you have to be your character and who you were as a human being first. And, when you have that down, then you can transition into the vampire elements.
Robert> It’s like a disease.
Rachelle> You have to be a human being first, who then gets the virus.
MediaBlvd> There seem to be two types of vampires -- the nice, angsty ones, like with Buffy and Lestat, and then there’s just the pure, killing, evil ones. Where do you stand on that issue?
Robert> Rachelle is one of the bad vampires, and I try to be nice to people, but not really. That’s what a lot of the story is about. Edward is deciding to go against his base instincts. He knows he’s a vampire, and he knows that what vampires do is go around killing people. That’s the whole point in being a vampire. In denying that, it’s kind of boring. If you’re a human, you can go around doing whatever you want, at all times. I think most people would choose to do that. But Edward, for some reason, decides he doesn’t want to do that, and he’s trying to figure out why he doesn’t want to do that, the whole time. I think the vampires who kill everyone make a lot more sense.
Rachelle> With the Cullens and the nomadic vampires, like my character Victoria, and James and Laurent, Stephenie’s got a good metaphor going for what happens to people when they get power, and that there are different kinds of leaders. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is what happens to the nomadic, evil vampires who decide that they’re better than humans and humans are just for feed. And then, with great power comes great responsibility, which is shown when they try to live amongst people and stifle their better urges.
Robert> The Cullens don’t act like superheroes at all, which is really strange. They have all these superpowers and they don’t go around helping people or saving anyone. They just want to keep themselves to themselves, and that’s it. They just want to have as normal a life as possible.
Rachelle> They’re preserving their humanity.
Robert> Edward saves Bella’s life, and he could have saved some other people’s lives, but he just doesn’t.
MediaBlvd> What was it like to with Kristen Stewart? What did she bring to the project?
Robert> When I was looking at the book and I thought it was impossible to play the character, I did the screen test with Kristen and I just really didn’t expect the girl who was playing Bella to be like that at all. It just drew something out. That’s why I really wanted to do the movie. It just felt really right, in the screen test. She’s really, really good. She’s an amazing actress. She’ll be really, really big. In a lot of ways, Bella is a damsel figure in Twilight, but Kristen is kind of tough. It’s interesting because you see this young, mortal girl having this relationship with, basically, a demi-God and she’s a lot stronger than he is, in a lot of ways. He looks to her for support, which I really liked. Kristen really has that strength in her. She’s good.
MediaBlvd> How did you approach kissing scenes in the movie?
Robert> I kinda just approached it from the front.
MediaBlvd> Do you use tongue or no tongue?
Robert> I always try to slip a bit of tongue in.
Rachelle> I think Cam and I got busier than Rob and Kristen did.
MediaBlvd> In the book, it talks about how, when Bella and Edward are close, there is that temptation for him to attack her. How do you put that into your performance?
Robert> The more Bella says, “I’m not scared of you. You’re not a monster,” the more Edward believes it himself, and he forgets that he is a vampire and what his actual urges are. He tries to kiss her and, obviously, it ends up being a nightmare.
Rachelle> She ends up getting carried away before he does.
Robert> She has this hormonal rush, and I have the “I want to kill you” rush. It ends up being quite sexy, in a weird way. You’re at a point where you want to do everything and kill them, at the same time. It’s the peak.
Rachelle> It’s the kind of sex we all wish we were having.
MediaBlvd> Were there a lot of stunts involved?
Rachelle> Rob did insane stuff with Cam, with all the rope work and everything, in that ballet scene.
Robert> It’s much harder than it looks. You would think that it’s kind of easy to do because you’re essentially being pulled around, but it’s very difficult to even maintain your center of gravity. You have to really fight against it, as well as letting it do what it needs to do.
Rachelle> And, someone else is in control of your forward motion, which is a little disorienting.
Robert> It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’d done wire work in other stuff, but normally with wire work, you’re just getting hit, so you fall over and it doesn’t really matter what happens to you. Anyone can fall. But, with all the stunts in this, we had to look good doing it, so it was kind of tough.
MediaBlvd> How do they do the diamond skin effect where the vampire skin glitters in the film? Is that CG, or was there make-up involved with that?
Robert> I don’t know. I haven’t actually seen that yet. It is CG, but I don’t know what it’s going to look like. That was one of the hardest things to do. We tried 1,000 different ideas. We did this thing with flakes of salt. We tried just about every single thing. I remember they painted one of the PA’s blue, which was kind of a confused direction. He ended up coming out with just a blue head. I didn’t really know what they were thinking with that.
MediaBlvd> Do you use an American accent, or your own accent?
Robert> An American one.
MediaBlvd> Did you find that challenging?
Robert> No, not really. I actually grew up watching American movies, so in a lot of ways, it feels more natural, if you speak in an American accent than speak with an English one. You feel like you’re acting more. Otherwise, I feel like I’m not actually doing anything.
MediaBlvd> Is the rain as constant in the movie, as it is in the book?
Rachelle> We all got hailed on. That was fun. It was pretty grey and horrible, though.
Robert> Oregon has the strangest weather stuff that happens, especially in the spring, when we were shooting. It would be sunny, snowing, raining and hailing, at exactly the same time. It could be raining, with no clouds in the sky. It was like fake weather. Every two minutes, the weather would change.
Rachelle> It was pretty crazy, actually.
MediaBlvd> So, what’s it like to be in one of the most anticipated films of the year?
Robert> It’s terrifying, in a lot of ways. It is also kind of exciting. I still can’t really come to terms with it. It’s just strange. I’m always just terrified. I’m terrified of everything. I don’t know why. As soon as one person recognized me, I started freaking out. Wherever I go, I freak out. Even when people come up, they’re always really nice, so it doesn’t make any difference. But, for some reason, I’m just a good freaker-outer. I just freak out, all the time.
MediaBlvd> Nobody has seen any footage, but you already have fans who are devoted to you, just because of your association with this project. What is it like to be part of this phenomenon?
Robert> It’s bizarre. You know that it is, essentially, because of the book. The book has so many obsessively loyal fans. It’s strange because people just immediately relate you to the character right away, rather than to you, as an actor. MediaBlvd> At what point did you become aware of the phenomenon?
Rachelle> I definitely became aware early on. I read the book just before my audition. And then, when they finally started releasing the casting -- and they hadn’t made an official release yet, so I don’t know how people found this stuff out, since I got booked in the morning and, the next day, there was something online -- people were playing with my photo and enhancing it and making me look evil because my character is an evil vampire. It’s intimidating because you’re stepping into somebody’s imagination. When a movie comes out and there’s no book first, the audience can sit down with more open minds. Here, they have a slot and they want you to fill it, and that can be quite intimidating. So, it was really nice to find out that people were mostly supportive. It’s terrifying because you’re like, “Oh, God, people are going to say that I’m not right.”
Robert> Everybody loved Rachelle, in the beginning. Everybody hated me at the beginning, universally.
Rachelle> But, that’s because nobody can be Edward, until they finally let go. Every woman has their own Edward. They had to open up to Rob, which they did. They love him now!
Robert> When you read the description of him, it says he’s so beautiful, it hurts to look at him. It’s difficult to act that, so I wouldn’t really know how to go about doing it. I hope there’s been a lot of post-production.
MediaBlvd> How faithful an adaptation of the book is the movie?
Robert> It’s completely faithful. The only difference is that the action scenes aren’t really in the book because the book’s written from Bella’s perspective and, most of the time, she’s either unconscious, or everybody’s moving too quickly so she doesn’t know what’s going on. All the action stuff is put in, so you can see it.
MediaBlvd> Are you looking forward to being a poster on the walls of teenage girls?
Robert> I don’t know. I like the doll. The doll is cool. That’s what I really want. I want it to have a little button in the back, so you can do stuff with it. I’m looking forward to the doll more than the poster.
MediaBlvd> Has the buzz on this movie generated any other offers for you?
Robert> Yeah. Things definitely have changed. When the first trailer came out, I don’t think anybody expected it to do as well as it did, but it got four million hits in three days, or something ridiculous.
MediaBlvd> How many of these films are you signed for?
Rachelle> Oh, God, they haven’t made any decisions about that. We’re praying we get to do all three. That’s all we know.
Twilight Trailer Spoof- because sometimes we all just need a good laugh. I thought it was hysterical, but maybe it’s just ’cause I’m up too late…