Here are a few photos from the Venice Film Festival premiere of Primetime, the Robert Pattinson-as-Chris-Hansen movie. Pattinson walked the carpet with his partner/wife Suki Waterhouse. Rob wore Dior, because he’s had a contract with Dior for well over a decade. Suki wore Saint Laurent. At the premiere, the film got an eight-minute ovation. All of the Venice reviews of Primetime are good-to-great. Most critics believe that Rob is giving a career-best “gonzo” performance as Hansen, but critics also acknowledge that it might be a tough sell for the awards season. We’ll see! During the press conference, Rob talked about fatherhood and To Catch a Predator and more.
Booking back-to-back projects in recent years: “Once you get the momentum going, it’s strangely not that hard. Once you start spinning plates, it gets quite addictive.”
Twice as much time after Suki had the baby: “I just had a baby. So I had no desire to go out at night, so suddenly I had twice as much time to do anything with, which was very helpful.”
Rob hopes the real Chris Hansen appreciates the movie: “Obviously, I hope he likes the movie. 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. There’s something magnetic about his presence. I watched the show when I was younger and didn’t think about it. 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. There’s something, even after watching literally thousands of hours of it, you can’t put your finger on it.”
[From The Guardian & Variety]
Merritt Wever was also on hand in Venice, because she plays a supporting role as Chris Hansen’s longtime producer, and she talked about how much she enjoyed playing someone morally ambiguous, if not completely amoral. I think that’s what Rob was getting at too – To Catch a Predator was one of one, it was so wholly weird and different than anything else on TV at the time, and it did become about Chris Hansen’s cult of personality too. He clearly had fun playing that kind of character too.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- ‘Primetime’ screening during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival at Sala Grande Featuring: Robert Pattinson, Suki Waterhouse Where: Venice, Italy When: 05 Sep 2026 Credit: Simone Comi/IPA/INSTARimages **UK, USA AND AUSTRALIA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- ‘Primetime’ screening during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival at Sala Grande Featuring: Suki Waterhouse, Robert Pattinson Where: Venice, Italy When: 05 Sep 2026 Credit: Manuele Mangiarotti/IPA/INSTARimages **UK, USA AND AUSTRALIA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- ‘Primetime’ screening during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival at Sala Grande Featuring: Robert Pattinson Where: Venice, Italy When: 05 Sep 2026 Credit: Simone Comi/IPA/INSTARimages **UK, USA AND AUSTRALIA RIGHTS ONLY**
Ill watch this just for Meritt. She’s incredible in every role shes in
Agreed, she’s been working forever and picks interesting roles, always delivers for whatever she’s been cast, and her coworkers have nothing but very nice things to say about working with her!
“So I had no desire to go out at night, so suddenly I had twice as much time to do anything …”
WHAT? How is he not getting extreme backlash for this? Uh, you could spend that time on your new baby??? Didn’t Waterhouse recently say something about their child “missing” him? So WTeverlastingF?? Imagine a woman saying she had twice as much time on her hands after having a baby. Of course it’s “not that hard” to book back-to-back-to-back projects, when you leave the. mother to do all the work with the baby.
He might have just meant he now had twice as much time that he could now spend with his baby. Lets not read too closely/literally an off hand comment.
I thought he meant he had more time with his family since he didn’t feel like going out as well. I think people are too quick to assume the worst when it comes to ambiguous comments.
That’s how I read it.
Or perhaps a live-in nanny
I had the exact same thought. I know they have hired help but still—I’d you have more time when your child is newborn or infant, you are being bad parent. Full stop.
He reduced his socializing, so he found extra time for his growing family. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing your priorities change after having kids. I’m really not understanding peoples dramatic responses.
I think he was actually commenting facetiously on people (especially men) who act like they don’t have time for their kids. He’s saying, now that I had a baby, that took priority over night life, so all that time partying was now spent with his kid. He had the time because he MADE the time is what he’s saying. It’s very wry, British humor that I think is getting lost in text.
I read it the same way, Veronica S. He is very good at calling things out, but in a way that makes people unsure they are being called out.
No one has twice as much time after they have a baby. They have no time at all. That’s if you’re doing the diaper change/feed/get down to sleep cycle 8 times a day, getting woken up 4 times a night, and barely have the energy to shower. It’s 2x as bad if your baby has colic or reflux.
So this tells me they had a night nurse and full time nanny from the jump, and that he also wasn’t doing any of the invisible labour of researching how they want to handle what type of formula, introducing solids, managing fevers, teething, wake windows and everything else.
That’s a shame, I was starting to like Rob a bit.
He said he stopped going out at night which gave him more time to be home. The knee-jerk reactions to his comment baffles me.
Suki Waterhouse just said that her daughter misses him because he has done all of these movies. He made this statement in the context of having back-to-back projects. I agree with SaraTor.
I took it as he had twice as much time at home than before because he wasn’t going out at night.
Me, too. Especially since before that, he was acknowledging that he had way too much going on (“spinning plates”).
On a related note, he has grown into quite an actor. He was sublime in the Odyssey. Oily and smarmy; emotions (annoyance, disgust, evil, lust, greed) flickering across his face. I was fascinated.
The voice he uses in this trailer is so incredible. It sounds so much like the real guy. I think he has really grown into an incredible actor. And honestly I’d watch anything with him in it and I was never a twilight fan. I like award show style movies, and he is totally becoming a brilliant character actor.
I love, love, love Suki’s outfit on her.
She is so pretty!
I hope Merritt Wever gets all the glory she is due. She raises the acting level of every project she appears in. One of my complaints about Gilded Age is how awkward and uncomfortable they all seem doing a period drama. Then MW does a guest appearance and waltzes in and shows them all how it’s done. Just like Patricia Clarkson she is one of our great actresses working today!