Robert Pattinson has been turned into enough memes to have a favorite. His pick is the photograph of him standing stiffly in a kitchen wearing an Adidas track jacket and camouflage pants, although nearly a decade later, he still does not understand why people find it funny.
Asked to choose his favorite meme of himself while promoting Primetime, Pattinson went straight to the image taken during preparations for the Safdie brothers’ 2017 crime thriller Good Time.
“There’s one from a fitting from Good Time, which I still to this day do not understand,” Pattinson told Entertainment Weekly.
The picture shows Pattinson standing in a kitchen with his arms at his sides and staring directly at the camera. Years after it was taken, internet users began pairing the otherwise ordinary image with increasingly specific scenarios, turning the photograph into one of the actor’s most enduring memes.
The Photo Came From Pattinson’s ‘Good Time’ Transformation
i’m telling my kids that this was fez from euphoria pic.twitter.com/E36ZFx5RT4
— maria (@tchaIammt) November 20, 2019
The image dates to Pattinson’s preparation to play Connie Nikas in Good Time. Co-director Josh Safdie originally posted it to Instagram on August 9, 2017, shortly before the film opened in theaters.
Safdie described Pattinson in the caption as “Proto-Connie,” indicating that the photograph captured an early version of the character.
The image did not become a major meme immediately. Know Your Meme traces its wider spread to later posts, with the photograph becoming particularly prominent online in 2020.
Users began placing Pattinson’s expression into jokes about awkward relatives, unexpected houseguests and strange boyfriends. One widely circulated version presented him as the cousin sent to retrieve folding chairs from the garage, while another imagined him as someone’s boyfriend who had unexpectedly shown up at the house.
Pattinson Still Doesn’t Know What Makes the Picture Funny
Pattinson’s confusion is not limited to the origins of the photograph. He told Entertainment Weekly that he still struggles to understand what people see in the image that makes it so adaptable.
His attempt to explain the meme led into a broader conversation about internet culture. Pattinson briefly became confused while discussing the “6-7” meme and acknowledged that trying to understand newer online trends made him feel increasingly out of touch.
“It makes me feel very, like, boomer,” he said.
The kitchen photograph is different from many celebrity memes because there is no obvious action or exaggerated reaction driving the joke. Pattinson’s rigid stance and blank expression have instead allowed users to attach their own situations to the image.
He Was Asking the Same Question With Zendaya Earlier This Year
Pattinson had already tried to make sense of the photograph months before naming it his favorite meme.
During a Vogue video with Zendaya earlier this year, Pattinson was asked whether he would rather discuss a viral meme or a viral conspiracy theory about himself. He immediately brought up the kitchen photograph.
Zendaya recognized the image before he finished describing it. Pattinson questioned how such an ordinary photograph had become so widely circulated, calling the situation “bizarre.” Zendaya offered a simpler explanation: “It’s a great image.”
The exchange also revealed that Pattinson no longer follows online culture as closely as he once did. He said he used to be much more “chronically online,” leaving Zendaya to explain some of the newer internet theories and jokes he had missed.
‘Primetime’ Has Already Produced Another Wave of Pattinson Memes
Pattinson’s latest movie has already given internet users new material. In Primetime, he plays a fictional television host inspired by Chris Hansen and the era of To Catch a Predator.
The trailer’s “You see how this looks, right?” scene quickly became reaction material after A24 released the footage in August. More recently, still images of Pattinson’s character staring across a table have been paired with rap lyrics and other captions across social media.
Pattinson has seen the new memes. While promoting the film at the Venice Film Festival, he said he was happy that viewers were already turning his character into online jokes, according to TheWrap.
Director Lance Oppenheim has his own connection to that internet history. In a recent GQ interview with Pattinson, Oppenheim said neither of them initially knew To Catch a Predator primarily through its original broadcasts. Pattinson knew it through memes, while Oppenheim remembered encountering the material through online culture and television parodies.
Primetime, starring Pattinson alongside Merritt Wever and Skyler Gisondo, opened in theaters on September 25.
