Chris Hansen, the former host of NBC Dateline’s true-crime series To Catch a Predator, has reacted to Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of him in A24’s new eerie drama Primetime.
Set to arrive in theaters this September, the forthcoming movie tracks the origins of the hit investigative news program, which ran from 2004 to 2007 and followed Hansen’s operations to catch adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with minors. Primetime also features Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Matthew Maher and Bokeem Woodbine, and marks director Lance Oppenheim’s narrative feature film debut.
The film’s first trailer was released earlier this week, and teases Pattinson’s strikingly transformed voice as Hansen. “At the end of the day, man must be held accountable for the decisions that he makes. Do you agree?” he says in a voice-over. “Do you watch television? Well, there’s something you should know. I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and you’re about to be a part of television history.”
Appearing on a recent segment of News Nation, Hansen, 66, addressed the movie’s first look.
“What? There’s a movie trailer?” he exclaimed, feigning shock. “What will they think of next?”
“He’s an actor, right? Young, talented guy?” he asked of Pattinson before being shown the clip.
“I mean, he sounds a lot like you,” argued newscaster Jesse Weber. “Did you have any idea about this? Did you have any working relationship with this?”
“We had heard that there was something like this in the works,” Hansen replied. “They reached out to me this week, and I’ve been asked not to talk about it a great deal at this point.”
When Weber again suggested Pattinson’s impression was fairly accurate, Hansen somewhat agreed. “Little bit,” he said. “Very dramatic.”
Hansen presented NBC Dateline’s To Catch a Predator across its entire three-year run. The series was canceled in 2008, following the suicide of Texas assistant district attorney Bill Conradt after he was “caught” and served an arrest warrant during production.
Hansen first joined the network in 1993 as a correspondent for Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric. He has won a total of eight Emmy awards throughout his career for his investigative reporting.
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While he parted ways with NBC in 2013, Hansen continues his work apprehending suspected pedophiles on Takedown with Chris Hansen, which streams on TruBlu. He also hosts his Have a Seat podcast, in which he takes listeners behind his most shocking stings and reveals never-before-heard details.
Primetime is expected to premiere in theaters this September, but an exact date has not yet been announced.
