Rob, Kristen, and Taylor ‘Breaking Dawn’ Interview

Some Twihards waited two days outside of the San Diego Convention Center just to see new clips from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and hear the cast – including Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and Kristen Stewart – discuss the film at the 2011 Comic-Con. Two days, outside in the elements, just to hear the film’s stars talk about the movie for an hour or so…that’s dedication.

And before taking to the stage in Hall H to field questions from the 6,500 patient Twilight fans, Pattinson (sporting a new interesting haircut), Lautner and Stewart took part in a press conference. Together with director Bill Condon, the threesome talked about their favorite scenes, how they tried their best to keep the wedding scene from being revealed while shooting was taking place and whether they believe Breaking Dawn Part 2 will truly be the end of the franchise.

Bill Condon, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, and Robert Pattinson Interview

How was it to film in Brazil?

Bill Condon: “It was great. It was amazing. That’s where Stephenie [Meyer] wrote the honeymoon. She actually had been. We went in search of what she wrote, and I think we found it. It was very cool. We would take a trip to work every day. That was great. We got stranded. That was not.”

Kristen Stewart: “It was nice being able to shoot on the actual streets and see the people. To see that, within the context of this movie is definitely jarring, in a great way.”

What’s it like to be loved all over the world?

Robert Pattinson: “It’s nice. It’s different. I don’t know if it’s love, necessarily. Shooting in Brazil, it’s interesting. One of the interesting things about having an international fanbase is that every single country has a different reaction to you and to the movie. Shooting on the street in Brazil – compared to people trying to sneak a picture of something, if you’re shooting in the States or Canada – people would literally just try to grab you. It was pretty fun. It would happen on the set, in the shot.”

Taylor Lautner: “I was not there. I do love Brazil, but I was not there. But they came back and showed me this pictured. They told me first that there was an extra that looked just like me. They showed me this picture and I even thought it was me. It was the weirdest thing. They had to place him further back in case the camera accidentally went over him.”

Kristen Stewart: “He was acting like Taylor, too. He looked like an Eclipse poster.”

Bill Condon: “Totally rewriting the story, they go on their honeymoon, and there is Jacob.”

Taylor Lautner: “That would have been so hilarious if the camera was going over while Edward and Bella were walking through, and Jacob was just standing there, watching them.”

Do you think the Breaking Dawn movies will truly be the end of the Twilight Saga?

Kristen Stewart: “Yeah, they’ll have Breakfast Time or something. There’s Twilight, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and then Brunch. I don’t know. It’s up to Stephenie [Meyer], really.”

Taylor Lautner: “I second that.”

Bill Condon: “Stephenie already said it’s the end of the Bella/Edward story. But, especially in the second movie, there are so many new characters, I’m not sure, but I suspect she’ll want to revisit them at some point.”

Robert Pattinson: “You sound like you have some secret knowledge.”

Out of all of the Twilight films, what was the most secretive scene that you had to film?

Kristen Stewart: “The wedding, definitely. It was like Secret Service style insane. The crew was completely inconvenienced, grumbling around the set like, ‘I can’t have my cell phone!'”

Taylor Lautner: “They were like, ‘No cell phone! No email!'”

Kristen Stewart: “It was like, ‘You don’t understand what this means to us! Thank you so much! If this dress gets on the Internet, I’ll die!’ But, that really was crazy.”

Bill Condon: “And then, there was a helicopter right as you were ready to take your vows.”

Kristen Stewart: “I had a Volturi cloak on because that’s all that we had to cover up. It was really funny.”

What was the scene that you felt was the most exposed to fans?

Robert Pattinson: “We didn’t have to do anything that was too intimate, where there were a lot of people around. Or, we didn’t know there were a lot of people around.”

Kristen Stewart: “We didn’t know when we were being photographed. That was always a weird experience after the fact. It was like, ‘Oh, that whole scene! Awesome!'”

Taylor Lautner: “A lot of the movie takes place inside, so most of our time was spent in Baton Rouge, filming on a stage, and then we had two months in Vancouver. Breaking Dawn is very intimate. And I feel like they did a really good job at allowing us to be creative and just be with each other. We didn’t have to focus on being distracted, or anything like that, on this movie.”

Kristen Stewart: “They protected us.”

Kristen, Breaking Dawn is such an emotional journey for Bella, with the wedding, honeymoon and being pregnant. What was it like filming all of that for months, and how did all of that affect you, personally?

Kristen Stewart: “I can’t draw a line between myself and stuff that I do. It’s funny, I don’t want to sound like it’s just about this, but really with everything I do, it’s hard for me to take myself out of it. I’d been building up to this for four years. I was 17 when I started doing these movies. This really is loaded with those really cathartic, impactful, huge life moments, and they’re not all completely fantasy.

They’re really very rooted in a reality that I can completely see myself in, and anyone who reads the book could imagine. Shooting the scenes, I had to realize that these moments will find themselves naturally. I can’t let the book punch me in the face every morning to wake me up. You have to let the moments happen, and they did. I just went for it. I do feel like it’s very, very close to the book and a really sincere telling of the story, but at the same time, there are bits that are surprising, that surprised me too, in the more iconic bits, like the wedding and on the honeymoon.”

Bill Condon: “The thing that amazed me is that there’s no bigger fan of Twilight than Kristen. She’s approached it as an actress, but she’s also like, ‘I know what it felt like, when I was reading this the first time.’ She was always pushing to make sure she was capturing that feeling. She did put that pressure on herself.”

Kristen Stewart: “That feels like such a self-conscious answer, but yeah.”

Bill, do you feel like there’s a theme running through your films of societal repression and people not being allowed to be themselves?

Bill Condon: “It would sound really pretentious to say that, but I do feel like I am drawn to people who are outsiders that are yearning, and all these characters are. Jacob is yearning all the time. Edward and Bella are trying to find a way to live the life that they were meant to.”

Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser and Peter Facinelli in Breaking Dawn Part 1.
Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser and Peter Facinelli in ‘Breaking Dawn Part 1’ (Photo © Summit Entertainment)

Do you guys have a favorite scene in these last two films?

Bill Condon: “I have a lot of them.”

Taylor Lautner: “I’ve always been able to choose one for all the movies, but I’m about ready to let you down. I’m so sorry. I’ve always been able to choose one for every single movie, but this one, I can’t! I don’t know. There’s so much going on is this move, and all of the characters are dealing with their own little things. It’s impossible for me to choose my favorite scene in this movie. Jacob changes so much, from the beginning to the end, so it’s hard for me to choose. I don’t know. It’s weird.”

Kristen Stewart: “There’s a scene with Bella and Charlie at the wedding that I love so much. And also there’s one with Renee as well. There’s one after the other, and I really liked them.”

Robert Pattinson: “The birth scene is so different to everything else in the movie. For a fantasy series that has a young-ish audience, I find it interesting. It goes quite far. It’s quite hardcore. It’s quite graphic. It was when we were doing it, anyway.”

Kristen Stewart: “It felt overtly graphic.”

Robert Pattinson: “But, there’s no other way to do it. If you read the book, there’s no way to do it in any kind of tamed way. It was fun. It felt like it was brave.”

Bill, when you were announced for this project, one of the points that you made was that you were a big fan of Dark Shadows. What was the appeal of that for you, and what are you feeling about these genres, in general?

Bill Condon: “I don’t know. I was a kid and I would run home to see that show. There were all kinds of creatures, but it was mostly vampires and Barnabas Collins. I think it was growing up in a very intense Catholic household that makes you a little twisted. Whatever new vampires are around, I’ve always been interested in them, as I was with Twilight.”

Do you guys ever wish that this was a small independent film that ran on the Sundance Channel? Your lives would be very different. How do you tune out the enormous distractions and just do the work?

Kristen Stewart: “If this was a tiny little independent movie that only ran on Sundance, then we would not be able to do the movie justice. Maybe the first few, but this one is really a big movie. It’s nice to be indulgent. It’s nice to shoot for six months with an A-lister (Bill Condon). We wouldn’t be sitting here doing a press conference about it. We’d be sitting in some cool little, snowy, lofty place in Sundance.”

Comic-Con is all about embracing your inner nerd. What are some of the nerdy or geeky things that you’ve learned about each other?

Kristen Stewart: “I think I’m always cool.”

Robert Pattinson: “I don’t think Kristen would say it’s nerdy, but she literally only watches the cooking channel, especially on set. It’s bizarre. She has a TV in the make-up trailer, which is always on. It’s her only diva-ish behavior, having the cooking channel on, at all times, in every room.”

Kristen Stewart: “And, you all reap the benefits.”

Taylor Lautner: “It’s true.”

Kristen Stewart: “Taylor can dance, and he never wants to say that he can.”

Taylor Lautner: “No, that’s so not true!”

Kristen Stewart: “He can move his hips better than I will ever dream. It’s crazy! He can move!”

Robert Pattinson: “That’s not nerdy. That’s awesome!”

Kristen Stewart: “You should see how he does it. It’s always to the craziest music.”

Taylor Lautner: “You’re right. I’ll give you that one. In the hair and make-up trailer. It’s where things happen.”

Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 Bella and Edward
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in ‘Breaking Dawn Part 1’ (Photo © Summit Entertainment)

Besides the wedding scene, what scene were you most nervous or apprehensive about shooting, knowing that you really had to pull it off?

Taylor Lautner: “I was pretty nervous about imprinting. I was given an X on a wall, and I had to walk into the room, on the verge of killing this baby, and then stop, twist and imprint on it, whatever that means.”

Robert Pattinson: “That sounds amazing! That’s Jacob’s signature move.”

Taylor Lautner: “That was challenging. I spent a lot of time talking to Bill [Condon] and to Stephenie [Meyer] and asking, ‘Okay guys, what exactly does imprinting even look like?’ It was tough, so I sure hope it comes across all right.”

Bill Condon: “He did beautifully.”

Robert Pattinson: “Embarrassingly, the thing I was most nervous about was taking my shirt off.”

Kristen Stewart: “At least he’s honest. That’s cool.”

Robert Pattinson: “So much of the books are about Edward’s body, and I’ve managed to avoid having my shirt off, the whole series. In the book, it’s almost every three pages. I was like, ‘I don’t think I can wear a t-shirt when I’m in the sea or a onesie.’ I look like an inflatable frankfurter in the sea.”

What was the most awkward scene you had to shoot?

Kristen Stewart: “I couldn’t pick up the kid sometimes. We have Mackenzie Foy, who is an amazing little kid. She’s the coolest kid ever and smarter than me in a lot of ways. Then, we had these other little girls, who would come in to play the younger version of Renesmee, and they’re all very awesome little kids, but not having them there every day, I was awkward and I can’t handle that. Me and McKenzie were awesome, but I just couldn’t really deal with that. I looked ridiculous. They were bigger than me, in some cases. I should have put the kid on my head, or something. That was just not a good day.”

Bill Condon: “This girl had to run toward Billy Burke but instead kept running into a wall. So, I was like, ‘No, you’ve got to carry her,’ and she said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ and then, she peed on you.”

Kristen Stewart: “I was holding her and she just peed, and that’s fine. She was so nervous.”

Robert Pattinson: “Talking about the baby, we had an animatronic baby for one bit. It was Kristen’s scene, where Bella had to be introduced to the baby for the first time.”

Kristen Stewart: “In the book, that was one of my favorite parts. And then, to know that you’re not going to be looking at a real child was weird.”

Robert Pattinson: “It was Chucky from Child’s Play.”

Kristen Stewart: “And the guy was sweating right below my eye-line. They’d get the hand up to touch your face, and then it sticks to your hair and pulls a little bit, and you’re like, ‘Ah, get that thing off me. Get me a baby! This is ridiculous!’ And it had hair and it’s a newborn baby. I know that that’s in the book and you can imagine how cool that would be.”

Robert Pattinson: “It looked like the trolls that you put on the at the end of your pencil.”

Bill Condon: “It was the weirdest thing, looking at the dailies. I would call cut and the baby’s eyes were still moving.”

Robert Pattinson: “It was Chucky Renesmee.”

How do you guys deal with the middle-aged women who love you? Does it creep you out?

Robert Pattinson: “I’m not creeped out at all by it. I guess to be creeped out by it, you’d have to be creeped out by middle-aged women in general, which I’m not. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.”

Taylor Lautner: “But, no complaints here.”