Plus, what it was like putting the Batsuit on for the first time.
Robert Pattinson wasn't pleased when news got out that he was set to portray Batman.
"When that thing leaked, I was f**king furious," the 33-year-old actor tells Variety in a recent cover story. "Everyone was so upset. Everyone was panicking from my team. I sort of thought that had blown up the whole thing."
The May leak revealing that Pattinson would put on the Batsuit for Matt Reeves' upcoming film came prematurely, as the actor hadn't even auditioned for the part when the news broke.
"It was terrifying," he says of the leak, which broke when he was promoting The Lighthouse at Cannes. "I was like, ‘Oh f**k! Does that screw me because they are so intent on secrecy?'"
After the leak, Pattinson's The Batman audition was quickly scheduled and he found himself rehearsing "literally in Cannes in my hotel room" before flying to Los Angeles for the audition.
"The whole thing was a lot," he says. "It’s maybe the craziest thing I’ve ever done in terms of movie stuff."
As soon as he put on the suit, though, everything fell into place.
"I put it on. I remember saying to Matt, 'It does feel quite transformative!' He was like, 'I would hope it does! You’re literally in the Batsuit,'" Pattinson recalls. "You do feel very powerful immediately. And it’s pretty astonishing, something that is incredibly difficult to get into, so the ritual of getting into it is pretty humiliating. You’ve got five people trying to shove you into something. Once you’ve got it on, it’s like, 'Yeah, I feel strong, I feel tough, even though I had to have someone squeezing my butt cheeks into the legs.'"
He ended up finding out that he had officially landed the role during his first day on set of Christopher Nolan's upcoming flick, Tenet, which left him feeling "absolutely relieved," even with some negative fan reaction to his casting.
"To be honest, it was less vitriolic than I was expecting," he says of the fan response. "It’s much more fun when you’re an underdog. There’s no expectation of you."
While Pattinson, who says he is trying to figure out "how to bring something new to [the role] and not... scare people off," initially shied away from blockbuster movies following the Twilight era, he's excited to jump into this role at this stage in his life.
"Big movies, generally the parts aren’t as interesting -- at least the stuff that was coming my way," he says of his job prospects following Twilight, before admitting, "I think I probably would have been a little bit nervous to have gone straight into [The Batman] immediately afterward."
"It’s actually an interesting part," he adds of Batman, which he reveals was a role he had "in my mind for quite a while" before Reeves agreed to meet with him. "I think it’s because he doesn’t have any superpowers."
The Batman hits theaters on June 25, 2021.
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