You would think that Robert Pattinson, someone who knows better than most the ruthlessness of the media spotlight, might know the consequences of telling a big, ‘ol fish story on late night television. Last week, the actor rolled by “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to talk “Good Time,” and shared a whopper of a story about a scene he claimed was cut from the film.
“There’s this one scene we shot— there’s a drug dealer who busts into the room, and I was sleeping with the dog and basically giving the dog a hand job,” Pattinson said. “It was a character thing. I asked the trainer [about it] because the director was like, ‘Just do it for real, man! Don’t be a pussy!’ And the dog’s owner was like, ‘Well, he’s a breeder. I mean, you can. You just gotta massage the inside of his thighs.’ I was like, ‘Just massage the inside of his thighs?!’ I didn’t agree to do the real one, so we made a fake red rocket.”
Naturally, the story went viral, and it didn’t take long for directors Josh and Benny Safdie to deny that it ever happened, and for PETA to declare they were investigating. Well, to prevent this story from getting even further out of hand, Pattinson has issued a statement revealing he made the whole thing up.
The story I told on Jimmy Kimmel last night seems to have spiraled out of control What didn’t come across is that this was supposed to be a joke. No one at all expected or assumed that anything like that would happen on the Good Time set.
We are all huge animal lovers and would obviously never do anything to harm an animal. Everyone involved in Good Time are amazing professionals and have come together to make a movie that I’m extremely proud of. I feel embarrassed that in the moment, I was trying to make Jimmy laugh, only to create confusion and a false impression.
So, hopefully that ends this whole storm of chatter about dog handjobs, and we can get back to talking about “Good Time,” which is fantastic. The film opens on August 11th. [EW]