Robert Pattinson lost a button on his shirt on the way to the Mill Valley Film Festival, but he’s been through worse. 

…

Sans button, Pattinson jokes he’s falling apart. 

“I think I feel worse (now) than I did then,” Pattinson says, fresh off the plane from Los Angeles. “I still don’t understand, to this day, how I didn’t get sick the entire time. Just being in a rain machine in sub-zero temperatures for months has definitely improved my whatchamacallit … immune system.”

Q: I was worried you were going to lose more than a button seeing your physically demanding performance in “The Lighthouse.” How did you get to a place where you could portray that type of isolation and insanity?

A: The script was so kind of audacious, there were moments with things in it I’d never seen anything like it in any other script. You realize you had to take a kind of running jump to kind of even reach any of it. I’m attracted to scripts where you first read it, it’s very engaging and you feel, “Wow, this has got some kind of totemic qualities, something really primal and powerful about it.” And it’s also working with Willem, I’ve seen the amount of energy that Willem can bring to a performance, so I kind of knew that it was going to be an adversarial type of relationship.

Q: Did you and Willem do any kind of exercises to get to a place where you were comfortable enough to do some of these very physically intimate scenes?
A: We rehearsed for a week, Willem loves rehearsing and I really dislike it, which is kind of handy for our relationship. We did five days of rehearsing and I just found it to be the most incredibly stressful thing in the world. By the time we were shooting with each other, there was already this weird tension, it’s the opposite of what’s supposed to happen from rehearsals, normally it’s supposed to get people relaxed with each other. I love Willem, he’s such a lovely personable guy but there was this strange energy.

Q: What did you do to get into the physicality of this character? I read your Esquire interview … do you want to elaborate on any of the points in that?
A: Whenever I read stuff I just think, “Wow, I just come across as a psychopath.” I read that article and was like, I did say those things, but now they look really weird.

Q: One of the things you said is that you ate mud.
A: I did eat a lot of mud. I do that on a few different movies. I think that comes from “Gladiator” having such a big effect on me as a kid, there’s one scene where he’s about to go into the arena and he picks up the sand and rubs it between his fingers. I always used to do that before scenes when I first started as a teenager, I added a little bit to it where I’d just eat it afterwards. Robert Eggers loves to shoot in one take. Some of the scenes are seven, eight minutes long and you need to be psyched. It’s almost going into a boxing ring or something. There’s so much energy expenditure. There’s a sort of strange reverse meditation where you kind of just invoke some kind of massive amount of rage inside you. I was reading that article and it sort of makes out that I was drunk for it. I thought about getting drunk for the drunk stuff, but it’s absolutely impossible to get drunk in any of these scenes. 

Q: Especially not on kerosene, we hope. 
A: Do people actually drink kerosene? That’s crazy. I think it was really just a question of trying to block out absolutely everything else that was going on in your life. I was isolating myself quite a lot, which isn’t particularly difficult in Nova Scotia, you can literally just walk down to the ocean and there’s not a soul around.

Q: There are moments I laughed out loud in spite of this being a very moody, very atmospheric film. Is it any different playing moments of humor in the film? I’m thinking of a moment in particular when you’re trying to dump something in the ocean and the wind changes directions.
A: I guess I’m one of those people who thinks, “Is something going to be truly funny if it hurts quite a lot?” I think everything can only be real if it hurts, like a compliment; I was talking about this other day — if you compliment someone, it has to give you some real pain to be a true compliment. I think throwing fecal matter in my face, that was probably the hardest scene in the entire movie and also terrifying. The cliff which I’m on was on the side of the cliff in gale-force winds and pouring rain, and I couldn’t really see anything. That was one of the more terrifying things I’d ever done in my life.

Rob talking The Batman:

Q: Speaking of heroes, you’re taking on the iconic role of Batman. Were there any hesitations entering another big fan franchise?
A: Nah, it’s a great part. I think when you’re older, it does feel a little different. I think once you’ve already dealt with it a little bit, I’m better at navigating it, I think. Maybe I’m not, maybe I’m completely unprepared.

It wasn’t available when I searched, but the interview should be available on Datebook podcasts or HERE *apparently coming soon – will update when available:

UPDATED: 17 October 2019

Tony Bravo shares new photo

Rob starts at 3.00

Yoshi James shared these gorgeous black and white versions on her IG today

Datebook shared this new photo on their IG

UPDATED: 19 October 2019

New outtake from The San Francisco chronicle #RobertPattinson pic.twitter.com/FSATL6WWmQ

— Stephanie (@TigerMarlowe) October 18, 2019