World-class troll Robert Pattinson recalls made-up story about watching clown die

For actors vaulted into the limelight essentially overnight, there are a couple of ways to handle all of that newfound attention. You can hide from it, like Daniel Craig did in the aftermath of his first James Bond movie, you can attempt to dissociate from it, like Kieran Culkin has (mostly) successfully done, or you can turn yourself into a top-rate troll like Robert Pattinson. 

The fact that Pattinson loves to lie is, at this point, one of the truest things about him. (Or, at least, about his public-facing persona.) Over the years, he’s told reporters that he doesn’t wash his hair, that he was a woman’s hand model, that he once ditched a stalker but taking her out to dinner and boring her with his problems, and probably about a thousand other anecdotes that we haven’t realized are fabricated. Is he even British? Honestly, jury’s out.

One thing we know for sure (we think) is that he didn’t watch a clown die when his little car exploded the first time he went to the circus. If you watch the below clip from an appearance he made on the Today show in 2011, you’d be forgiven for taking him (and his ridiculous story) at face value. Matt Lauer sure did. “What a bizarre way to start the interview,” the since-disgraced host responded after Pattinson spun his yarn about the “terrifying” incident. 

Pattinson apparently just rewatched that interview, and reflected on the experience in a profile for The New York Times Style Magazine. “There was absolutely no hesitation at all [in my voice],” he mused with what the NYT reporter called “a combination of pride and alarm.” He continued, “I’m like, ‘What on earth? Are you possessed?’” 

Apparently, he was just really bored of being asked the same questions over and over, which led to this rather, er, creative solution. (For alternative methods, see Cate Blanchett and leaf blowers.) “The only thing people would ever ask me about was being famous. You go into, like, a fugue state,” he explained. 

The past tense in that quote makes it sound like Pattinson’s kicked the habit, but that’s probably just how he gets ya. For example, he also told the NYT that he had been working on designing a chair with a slit running down the center of the cushion that “opens up for you like you’re in a kind of cocoon,” which he apparently modeled using a Fleshlight and an empty toilet paper roll. Yeah… we’ll let you be the judge of that one.