TotalFilm When we sat down to talk about The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with star Robert Pattinson, we naturally brought attention to the elephant in the room: the hotly debated sex scenes.
Those marital relations have some pretty severe consequences too, with Bella becoming pregnant with a half vampire-half human child. Turns out we weren’t the only ones a little taken aback by this turn of events.
“When the final book came out, I was like ‘She’s not even thinking outside the box anymore. She’s broken the whole box!'” Pattinson told us. “She went all out on the last one. It’s almost a different genre of movie.”
So, was Pattinson daunted by the prospect of the sex scenes? “It’s funny,” he added. “People talk about sex scenes in the book, but there aren’t actually any. It’s all in people’s imagination. They’re like ‘It’s so hardcore,’ but it always fades to black. It just shows bits of the aftermath.”
Not that that filmmakers will be taking that approach. “You have to show something!” Pattinson asserts.
“You can’t fade to black in the movie because people would go insane! It’s strange trying to do a singular event which everyone is expecting. At the end of the day, watching other people having sex is never going to be that spectacular. Hopefully it’ll be good. There’s so much hype. You’re like ‘God, I hope this lives up to it.’”
The saucy scenes are the least of Pattinson’s worries though, with the fang-to-placenta caesarean causing a much weightier concern. “It was horrible,” he admitted. “Insanely graphic and the most nerve-racking thing about the whole shoot.”
Stewart, meanwhile, enjoyed the challenge of playing a different side of Bella, explaining she turns into a “feral animal” to keep her baby rather than save her own life and go through a termination.
“She’s fighting for what she believes in, saying, ‘I would die for it.’ You see Bella get very close to death and it’s like ‘Wow, she wasn’t lying.’ which was cool to see,” says Stewart. “I hope it doesn’t scare people, but then, on the other hand, I hope it does.”
“This film is more mature,” agrees a furrow-browed Lautner, whose Jacob realises the game is up after mooning shirt shirtlessly over Bella for a three films. But instead of licking his wounds, he ends up ‘imprinting’ on Bella’s new baby Renesmee. In werewolf terms this means he knows he’s found his soulmate as soon as he claps eyes on the nipper. Hang on - what?
“I got the book the first day it came out,” recalls the perpetually cheer Lautner. “I was reading it, turning the pages, thinking ‘Is Jacob going to end up with Bella or not?’ I finally got to the page and I was like ‘He’s with...Bella’s baby!’ That was a shocker for me. It took me a while to get used to that idea. It was very complicated and I had to have some faith with that.”
Like rumoured real-life couple Pattinson and Stewart, Lautner’s clearly grateful to a franchise which has made him one of the richest teens in Hollywood - the trio are said to have negotiated a $12m pay day per Breaking Dawn installment, and a 7.5 per cent of the gross box office.
Pattinson admits to “living a life which I didn’t really know existed.” though he’s remarkably down to earth and self-deprecating - at one point even announcing his flies are undone with a red-faced, “Well, that’s embarrassing.”
He clearly finds it easier to deal with the press than Stewart does, who claims to be over the worst of some pretty cringeworthy media moments.
“It’s easier now; I was such a freak with the press stuff in the beginning,” admits the actress, who’s easily the most intense and analytical of the trio. “Everyone though I was a weirdo. You are thrust into precarious situations where it’s now your job to very concisely communicate to the world.” She fidgets in her seat. “And how the fuck do you talk to such a generalised idea of people? You realise you’re going to say stupid things and people will think you’re stupid.”
The Twilight Saga may be on its final chapter, but with the second part of Breaking Dawn still to come next year, the cast won’t be leaving their alter egos behind just yet. Or even years to come, according to Stewart.
“It’ll be strange when it’s over - I don’t know yet because I’m still so on it,” she says. “It’s sad, but then it’s not sad. You have to appreciate those moments, realise they’re going by. The fans aren’t going to forget they liked it and in 10 years time they’ll still remember why they loved it. I’ll probably still be answering questions and talking about Twilight for the rest of my career.”
For more from Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, get the new issue of Total Film Magazine, which is out now!
Thanks RPLife for the iPad scans. Additional transcript via StrictlyRobsten
