Possibly realizing that things have gone too far when even PETA starts praising your actions, actor Robert Pattinson was forced to clarify today that he was just joking when he suggested that his Good Time directors had encouraged him to jerk off a dog. Pattinson told the story on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night, recounting an incident in which his character in the film—a desperate bank robber who believes he has a “connection” to animals—apparently masturbates a dog.
Describing filming, Pattinson said, “The “director was like, ‘Just do it for real, man! Don’t be a p–!’ And then the dog’s owner was like, ‘Well, he’s a breeder, I mean, you can.’” But as appealing as the image of Edward Cullen sullenly frottaging a dog to completion is, Pattinson said his comments about the incident were merely being driven by that most primal of forces: the urge to make Jimmy Kimmel laugh. He issued a statement about the matter today, hoping to clarify that nobody on the set was actually suggesting the dog be pleasured for the benefits of the film, and that the plan was always to use a manufactured dog phallus for those shots:
The story I told on Jimmy Kimmel last night seems to have spiraled out of control. What didn’t come across is that this was supposed to be a joke. No one at all expected or assumed that anything like that would happen on the Good Time set. We are all huge animal lovers and would obviously never do anything to harm an animal. Everyone involved in Good Time are amazing professionals and have come together to make a movie that I’m extremely proud of. I feel embarrassed that in the moment, I was trying to make Jimmy laugh, only to create confusion and a false impression.