Robert Pattinson will forever be known as Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga. Yes, he is a very talented actor and has had tons of other movie roles but to many — myself included — every time I see a photo of R. Pattz, I think of dear old Eddie C. He was the vampire with the perfect hair who stole Bella Swan and literally everyone everywhere’s heart. The world got five movies worth of swoonworthy Edward moments, but since the last film was released in 2012, there seems to be one thing Robert has done: pretty much admit he probably shouldn’t have played the beloved vampire. And I’m here thinking, well Rob, no one really forced you to.

Let’s backtrack a bit: Rob just stopped by The Howard Stern Show for a new interview, where he once again spoke about how he legit almost got fired from the first Twilight movie. Basically, he explained that he was taking this whole vampire role super seriously and everyone wanted him to smile more and take a more lighthearted approach to being a vampire.

“I was very serious. I thought at the time – I was 21 – if you were going into a relationship with someone, the way you could make it really intense was if you could barely talk to each other, you could barely touch each other, incredibly serious all the time. And that’s kind of how teenage relationships are,” Rob said. “But everyone was like it ‘No, it should be happy and having fun! That’s what people want!’ and that’s the whole teen romance thing. Now the whole series is known as a brooding thing, but I remember the producers giving me the book and every single instance where my character smiled, they’d highlight. I got a different highlighter and showed all the times he frowned.”

robert pattinson nightmare

So he initially was all about standing up for how he felt Edward should come across. That’s fine and dandy and you now, he is a nearly 200-year-old vampire so it makes sense he’s not the most happy-go-lucky guy around. Plus Bella and Edward’s relationship was super dramatic when you think about it. Rob went on to explain that he legit really was about to get the ax if he didn’t change up his approach to the character, which he obviously did to a certain extent since he played Edward during the entire saga.

“I thought I was pretty safe but [my agents] flew up and said, ‘You have to do the opposite of what you’re doing now or you’re going to get fired today.’ I came back after lunch and was like “Hi! I want to keep my job!” I was probably going a little bit too miserable, so there was some kind of compromise was made,” Rob explained.

And alas, there are plenty of moments when Edward does actually smile.

edward cullen smiling

Now, let it be known this isn’t the first time Rob has spoken about how he was rather difficult to work with during the making of the first movie. Back in May of 2017, he told The New York Times about his agents coming to the set to give him a stern talking to and he went on to say, “I didn’t have to kiss anybody’s [butt] the entire time. I don’t think I did, anyway.”

So he still did what he wanted. And going even further back to 2012, he told Yahoo! Movies he was often “fighting with everybody in control all the time…to the point where I almost got fired.”

robert pattinson hates twilight

Long story short, Rob is often reflecting on his time in these movies with a bit of a weird outlook: he keeps bringing up how he was almost fired. So did he really not want to be there? Legit no one was forcing him to play Edward. And like why did he even audition then once he read the script? But it seems like he did have a good time in some capacity since he and his co-star Kristen Stewart in fall in love off-screen so it couldn’t have been all that bad, right? Listen Rob, we appreciate the honesty and all that, but don’t ruin the magic that is Twilight by telling us over and over again how the only thing that comes to mind is that Edward could’ve been someone else completely. He has even said he would be interested in another sort of spin-off movie, which tbh is a bit mind-boggling. It seems like Rob tries to distance himself from this franchise and embrace it all at once, which is all a bit confusing. And hey, if I was a part of these movies, like even just Girl #2 of Forks whose shoe was in like one scene, I would be forever proud. This saga was a time in movie history, it was a full-on phenomenon and that doesn’t happen often.

Look, Rob IS Edward. He always will be. There’s no changing that. So he can keep going on and on about how there was a chance way back when, once upon a time that he could’ve been fired from it all, but he wasn’t. Time to accept it, Rob. Twilight is forever a part of you.

Watch: Then-and-Now Pics of the ‘Twilight’ Cast

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