Robert Pattinson spent Christmas Day on Zoom preparing Primetime

Robert Pattinson spent eight hours in a Zoom meeting on Christmas Day 2024 to prepare for Primetime going into production.

The upcoming thriller marks the first project Pattinson has produced from "the very beginning", and he was so invested in getting everything ready for production in January 2025 that he spent eight hours on Zoom with director Lance Oppenheim and writer Ajon Singh.

"It's the first thing I've properly produced from the very, very beginning. And we were doing it really as a team the whole way through it," he told GQ. "I remember two Christmases ago, I was on Zoom on Christmas Day for eight hours with Lance and Ajon, who (was writing) it on Christmas Day because we were starting in January. It was one of those things where you're like, 'Okay, we're throwing everything at this and trying to make it work.'"

The Twilight star originally joined the project as a producer and brought on documentarian Oppenheim to direct. But when he read the second draft of the script, he decided to star in it too.

"When the second draft of the script came in, I was like, 'Ooh, I really like this.' It's really unusual and kind of audacious," he shared. "It's so fun to work on something where it was Lance's first narrative feature. Everyone cared so much about it."

In Primetime, Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the host of Dateline NBC's mid-2000s hidden-camera segment, To Catch A Predator.

To prepare for his portrayal, the British actor listened to Hansen's podcast constantly and tried to imitate his "unique voice".

"It was actually incredibly difficult," he added. "His voice is really iconic to me, and it's very hard to do it."

Primetime debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, and is set to be released in U.K. cinemas on 30 October.