It’s been a week since Tenet dropped its mind-bending new trailer, and if you’re still confused by cars moving backwards and cryptic lines like, “You’re not shooting the bullet. You’re catching it,” don’t feel bad. Robert Pattinson stars in the eagerly anticipated Christopher Nolan film, and even he doesn’t entirely know what the movie is about.
While providing quotes for an in-depth Esquire profile on Tenet star John David Washington, the former Twilight heartthrob revealed that he was generally clueless about exactly what was happening while filming, and he would often rely on Washington to help him out, which resulted in Pattinson having doubts about whether he completely misunderstood his own character.
“I mean, there were months at a time where I’m like, ‘Am I . . . I actually, honestly, have no idea if I’m even vaguely understanding what’s happening.’ And yeah, I would definitely say that to John David. On the last day, I asked him a question about what was happening in a scene, and it was just so profoundly the wrong take on the character. And it was like, ‘Have you been thinking this the entire time?’ . . . There’s definitely a bond in the end in kind of hiding the fact that maybe neither one of us knew exactly what was going on. But then I thought, Ah, but John David actually did know. He had to know what was going on.”
Of course, these quotes arrive on the heels of Pattinson’s now-infamous GQ interview where he claims to be eating out of cans and not working out for The Batman before setting his microwave on fire trying to cook pasta. He also makes similar remarks about not even knowing the plot of Tenet, which prompts GQ writer Zach Baron to reach out to Nolan who… kind of sets the record straight?
“The interesting thing with Rob is, he’s slightly f*cking with you,” Nolan said. “But he’s also being disarmingly honest. It’s sort of both things at once.”
An ambiguous answer about an ambiguous film. Very on brand.
(Via Esquire)