Robert Pattinson Lied in a 2011 Interview About Seeing a Clown Die in a Circus Explosion: Here’s Why

Robert Pattinson can’t always be trusted.

The Mickey 17 actor, 38, addressed his habit of fibbing in interviews while speaking to The New York Times for a story published Wednesday, Nov. 4.

Pattinson said he recently rewatched a 2011 interview he did with Matt Lauer on the Today show, during which he told Lauer, 66, he’d once seen a clown die during a circus — a made-up anecdote, it turns out.

“There was absolutely no hesitation at all [in my voice],” Pattinson said about his lying. “I’m like, ‘What on earth? Are you possessed?’ ”

The Batman actor explained to The Times he would grow bored quickly with interviews early in his career when he shot to stardom with Twilight. “The only thing people would ever ask me about was being famous. You go into, like, a fugue state,” he explained.

Footage from Pattinson’s April 18, 2011 Today interview shows him telling the clown story after being asked whether he considered joining the circus as a kid. At the time, Pattinson was promoting the movie Water for Elephants, which follows a traveling circus.

“[The clown’s] little car exploded — the joke car exploded on him. Yeah, seriously,” Pattinson said at the time, even after Lauer asked if he was being serious. “My parents had to, like— everyone ran out. It was terrifying…. The only time I’ve ever been to a circus.”

A video on YouTube from the German premiere of Water for Elephants days after that Today interview shows the actor admit he “actually made the whole thing up” when an interviewer asked him about it.

“Now it’s coming back to haunt me. I said it on some show, it was really early in the morning and it was the day after the New York premiere and someone asked me what my experience at the circus was, and I was like, ‘Oh God, I have nothing interesting to say,’ ” Pattinson said at that time.

In a 2018 conversation for Interview magazine, Pattinson said he “definitely” gets a “certain high from” interviews, adding: “There’s a little gremlin inside of me that thinks, ‘Just say something shocking. You’re only here for a few minutes, say something terrible.’ There’s a kind of perverse glee I get from that. But I’ve given my publicist a number of heart attacks.”