The Twilight Saga, Entertainment Weekly Covers: 2008-2012
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
How to explain The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2? Let’s hear Robert Pattinson give it a shot. The actor, 26, says this final instalment of the francise – rates PG-13 and in theaters Nov. 16 – is “stranger than all the other films put together.” He pauses. He sighs. He stammers (charmingly, British-ly) before arriving at a surprisingly simple resting place: “Vampires are weird.”
“Let me tell you, this movie is so weird”, confirms Stewart, 22, clearly intending this as a compliment, “It. Is. Bizarre.”
Bella has now left the mortal world behind and joined the sparkly-skinned Cullen clan both physically and spiritually. Says Lautner, 20, “That’s kind of the huge thing that fans are waiting for – to see the clumsy teenage Bella that Kristen did so well suddenly become this super-sexy vampire who’s athletic and graceful. She took it very seriously and pulls it off.” Condon agrees: “I don’t think you can grasp how major an achievement it is till you see it. Her transformation from high school girl to fierce warrior is amazing. She’s a different species now.” Stewart says that years of watching her castmates helped inform how she played Vampire Bella. “I know every single version of vampire, and I took a little bit from everyone,” she says with a laugh. “But I wanted her to be the best one.”
Not that it didn’t take some adjusting. “Kristen complained about 500 times more than I have,” says Pattinson of the uncomfortable red contact lenses that the actors playing vampires must wear. “She condensed four years of complaining into a few months.” (Stewart, long used to Pattinson’s teasing ways, sighs in response to this and reminds EW that she’s been wearing brown contact lenses over her green eyes since the series began.)
Condon says it went well beyond superficialities. “They were amazing with her,” he says. “It really brought something paternal out in Rob, and Kristen was especially protective. I’d have to interrupt them when they were in deep conversation to get going with a scene.” It helped that Stewart began her own acting career as a child, in movies such as The Safety of Objects and Panic Room. “I loved chatting with Mackenzie,” she says. “I’m always curious about what’s going on in the minds of kids on set. She’s really close to the age I was when I started.”
Pattinson points out that having an impressionable youth on the set curbed certain cast members’ predilection for raucousness. “We’re all around the same age and we’re really not polite to each other anymore. You’d have to tone it down when Mackenzie was around,” he says. Or at least attempt to. “She had a little swear jar, and I think she made 850 bucks or something.” (Stewart, known to work blue in casual speech, laughs when asked if she managed to respect the swear jar: “Uh, yeah, no.”)
Playing a mother to an 11-year-old actress, Stewart says, might have been difficult in a more traditional context, but this being the Twili-verse, it was easier to wrap her head around mothering a child who in real life is only a decade or so younger: “[My relationship with Renesmee] is so completely rooted in this world, and I could relate to it because I very much believe it.” Bella and Renesmee’s bond is a particularly special one, complete with supernatural methods of communication. “It’s a really cool relationship. I hope it comes across,” Stewart says. And having an actress like Foy, who (rather spookily) resembles both her and Pattinson, didn’t hurt either.
Pattinson, who’s seen a rough cut of the film, found himself surprisingly moved. “The end is so sweet. There’s this nice finality to it,” he says. “Everyone who was watching started crying. It does a serious justice to the series.”
Stewart emphatically agrees. “Bill decided to do this really f—ing amazing thing at the end,” she says. “The fans are going to go nuts.”
You. Me. Arm-wrestling. Now.
Entertainment Weekly, Breaking Dawn Part 2 Stills
Twilight - Breaking Dawn
