Chris Hansen Questions Whether Robert Pattinson Portrayal in ‘Primetime’ Is ‘Identity Theft’

Chris Hansen would like you to take a seat … anywhere but at a screening of Primetime, the upcoming biopic in which Robert Pattinson portrays the former Dateline reporter, famous for his To Catch a Predator show. He hasn’t yet seen the film, which premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival, and he doesn’t want to, according to a new interview.

Instead, he told the The Hollywood Reporter he’s not taking it sitting down. He’s consulting with lawyers and hypothesizing on whether or not Pattinson’s portrayal of him in a fictionalized film, which he says exaggerates how thirsty he was for a hit with Predator, breaks laws.

“Obviously, I’m a public figure, and the threshold for defamation is high,” Hansen said to a question over Daryl Hannah’s similar objections to Love Story. “A number of things have to be shown. Are there other, more creative legal theories that could hold them accountable? Maybe. Is it identity theft? What separates this from identity theft?

“If somebody takes your name and image and makes money from it in a commercial enterprise, is that stealing somebody’s identity?” he continued. “I don’t know. It’s a question for our legal system, I suppose.”

Hansen contended that filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, who also codirected the buzzed-about Elizabeth Holmes film You Can See Everything with Nathan Fielder, pulled Hollywood tricks on him. “Obviously, we knew something was in the works,” he said. “I’ve been a reporter for 45 years. You hear things. But to come to you at the last minute and say, ‘We’ve done this, and we didn’t feel that we had to come to you to discuss it,’ seems sneaky and somewhat disingenuous, especially because the project is so largely a work of fiction.” He also took issue with former NBC executive Jeff Zucker playing himself in the film. “Maybe Jeff is a Hollywood insider,” he said.

Hansen said that the film’s producers, which include Pattinson, wanted him to sign an NDA to se the film. “I said, ‘I’d love to see it. I’m happy to agree not to give away the plotline or anything like that, but I don’t think I need to sign an NDA.’ We came to an impasse, and that was that. I will see the film at some point, I assume when it comes out, and I’ll be able to judge it based upon that.”

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In the meantime, Hansen said he has attorneys on the case. “I have lawyers looking at it, the best guys there are in this part of the world,” he said. “But what do you get out of that besides making a statement? Is there something to be done? Is there some justice to be served? I don’t know.”

He’s also not happy at the prospect the film could be a huge success. When The Hollywood Reporter asked how he’d feel if Pattinson were nominated for an Oscar for his performance, the Dateline host said he thought it would be a bad look. “I think it’s an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators,” he said. “They turn something that is very positive, very challenging and not without risk into what is essentially a horror film.

“I guess it’s not surprising that a Hollywood studio would act in such an exploitative or predatory manner,” he continued. “We’re talking about an industry that was led by perhaps one of the biggest predators to walk the planet, Harvey Weinstein. They’ll all pat each other on the back and say, ‘What a great job. This is really dark and mysterious and intriguing.'”
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But in the same interview, Hansen, who has since cofounded the true-crime streaming service TruBlu, said he found the documentary Predators about his series objectionable. “It was almost like, ‘Have you hugged your neighborhood predator today?'” Hansen says. “He had a sociologist analyze whether it was appropriate to expose these guys and whether we’re too rough on them. It got a little silly at some point, and I think people saw that when they watched the documentary.”

In spite of Hansen’s issues with Primetime, the film, which also features Merritt Weaver, Skyler Gisondo, and Phoebe Bridgers, is set to open via A24 in select theaters before going wide in October.