How Robert Pattinson Got His Hair Ready for ‘Primetime’

Robert Pattinson is no stranger to switching up his hair for a role. There was the bleach dye job he did for Good Time, his swooshy emo bangs for The Batman, and whatever the hell that undercut soul patch was circa 2014. His latest role in A24’s Primetime, brings him into the real-life world of To Catch a Predator, the controversial 2004 reality television series where host Chris Hansen would lure potential sex offenders to a sting house where they’d oftentimes be arrested. To play the tenured broadcast journalist in the film—which premieres September 25—Pattinson had to assume the look of a newscaster: well-coiffed, tan, and frequently stressed the hell out.As a news correspondent, Hansen established a signature look for himself: short- to medium-length hair parted to the side with a few wispy strands gracing the upper forehead. It’s a style that Primetime hair department head Tony Ward assumes most broadcast journalists have defaulted to since the days of WWII-era newscaster Edward R. Murrow’s shiny, slicked-back side part. “It's just sort of plastered into shape,” Ward tells GQ. “I guess somewhere along the line, somebody did it and everybody was like, ‘Oh, that's kind of cool. Let's just keep doing that.’”Ward, who styled Pattinson’s hair for Primetime, noticed that Hansen was the sort of TV personality who was always camera ready. To recreate Hansen’s look on Pattinson, they used the actor’s real hair and combed it into a side part before tousling a few strands on top so it didn’t look too sculpted. Ward also pursued a “softness and ruffleness” by lightening Pattinson’s hair and adding frosted tips.“I'm talking about a coloring technique where they used to pull the hair through a cap and lighten it,” the veteran film hairstylist says. “It’s called frosting or highlighting frosting. So we went back in and put some highlights in the top part of his hair just so it kind of matched Chris's hair a little more.”To complement that broadcaster look, Primetime’s makeup department head Carla Chao Brenholtz also lightened the actor’s eyebrows in a similar hue to his hair. And just as Hansen's hair was groomed as if a camera would be pointed at him any second, so was his skin.“Mr. Hansen looks very newscaster-esque,” Chao Brenholtz tells GQ. “So Rob would do a self-tanner, and I would brush the self-tanner on him. And then we did airbrush foundation so that he really had that make-upy Ken doll look.”The final touch for making Pattinson’s skin pop on camera was a layer of bronzer every day, which Chao Brenholtz said ended up aging the actor’s appearance, who is seven years younger than Hansen's age in 2006, the year during which Primetime takes place. “What was cool about it is the more makeup you put on somebody who's over 30, the more it kind of creases in their little creases,” she elaborates. “It ages you, makes you not look your best self. And Rob knew that and was totally down.”Hansen had been open about the toll that working on such a heavy show took on his mental health, and it’s reflected in Pattinson’s portrayal of the host as the movie progresses.“We showed a deterioration within the character just with the stress that he was going through,” Chao Brenholtz says. “We would start with that Ken doll look and then add circles under his eyes and bags just so he would look like he was coming undone.”