Not only does Robert Pattinson provide no shortage of quotable anecdotes about Tenet and The Batman in his new GQ cover story, but he also handled the photography himself.
Pattinson was interviewed by Zach Baron for the publication's latest issue, a COVID-19 era collection built on the theme "creativity in the time of quarantine," a particularly fitting one for the Pattinson piece.
Tenet, the 34-year-old most notably offered, purportedly doesn't go the direction many online theorists have long been positing.
"[My character is] not a time traveler," he confirmed. "There's actually no time traveling. That's, like, the one thing I'm approved to say."
Approved or not, Pattinson did offer up a bit more, though his additional Tenet commentary came with a reminder from director Christopher Nolan that the actor could simply be fucking with us.
"Even if I had seen it, I genuinely don't know if I'd be able to…I was just thinking, I just called up my assistant 20 minutes ago: 'What the fuck do I say? I have no idea,'" Pattinson said, adding that the movie places sequences the size of "the climax of a normal movie" into "every single country" by way of multiple massive set-pieces. In other words, the latest Christopher Nolan film does indeed sound like it's going to be a Christopher Nolan film.
As for Batmannery, Pattinson makes repeated mentions in the Baron piece of his current eating habits, which are directly connected to the paused-by-coronavirus production.
At the time of the interview, Pattinson is said to be in London with his girlfriend in an apartment "the Batman folks rented for him." The apartment's daily activities include eating food provided by the Batman team, inspiring a joke from Pattinson about his fondness for eating like a "wild animal...out of a trash can."
Amazingly, Pattinson even managed to tuck in a mention of a much-derided previous take on the character, i.e. the Clooney edition. As he explained to Baron, Pattinson recently passed the time by watching a behind-the-scenes documentary on the Batman & Robin production, which admittedly isn't known for having resulted in a worthy franchise entry.
"You've seen this sort of lighter version, you've seen a kind of jaded version, a kind of more animalistic version. And the puzzle of it becomes quite satisfying, to think: Where’s my opening?" Pattinson said. "And also, do I have anything inside me which would work if I could do it? And then also, it's a legacy part, right? I like that. There's so few things in life where people passionately care about it before it's even happened."
Read the full piece, which is stacked with highly readable goodness, right here.
Sadly, The Batman The Pattman has been pushed back until late 2021. Summer 2020 release plans for Tenet, however, apparently remain unchanged. For now, anyway.
