Earlier this month, Warner Bros. invited press to an early screening of The Batman followed by a Q&A with Robert Pattinson and other members of the cast and crew, moderated by Tiffany Smith, familiar to DC fans as one of the hosts of DC All Access.
Smith kicked off the night by asking the creatives how it felt to be with a real live audience that has watched a film they’ve been working on over the course of this pandemic.
“It’s really crazy to be out here with so many people and usually a film like this, it’s exciting to get to see it with an audience for the first time, but after the last couple of years we’ve had, this is even bigger of a deal,” she began. ”How does it feel to get to be with people who have actually, finally seen the movie in an audience?”
Robert Pattinson charmed the crowd with a jovial humility, before acknowledging the steadfast passion of Batman fans.
“I’m really glad you’re [all] wearing masks so I can’t read your micro expressions because I’m absolutely terrified, I feel like I’m on the block,” he replied. “I’m very very excited and having the kind of fan base like Batman does, just to bolster us through this period as well and knowing there’s still anticipation after taking forever to shoot the movie, even waiting forever for it to come out and there’s still this excitement, it’s really lovely.”
The first question from attendees came from Dan Casey with Nerdist.com, who wanted to know about Pattinson’s process for approaching the voice of Batman.
“Playing a character that’s so iconic, everyone focuses on the voice of Batman. What was your process like in determining how you wanted to approach the voice?” Casey asked.
Pattinson reminded the audience about the amount of time he had available between being casted and the start of shooting, which allowed him to approach the character in an organic way.
“It’s a lot of trial and error. I had a lot of time to think about it. I think I was cast about 7 or 8 months before we started shooting, so I was experimenting with a lot of different things. And I think the first two or three weeks, we’re kind of doing a variety of different voices because there’s only a couple of lines in the first few scenes we shot,” Pattinson said. “[Matt and I] just sort of settled on something. It just started to sit in a very particular place and felt a little bit like progress from other kinds of Bat voices and felt somewhat comfortable to do as well.”
Pattinson noted a symbiotic-like relationship with the suit and the character.
“It’s weird. It just suddenly starts to feel right and it kind of is. It seems to be the more you embody the suit, the more you embody the kind of character, it just started to come out quite organically and that’s kind of what I was trying to do with the character as well,” Pattinson said.
It was a fine line between creating something truly unique yet natural at the same time.
“I was trying to think he’s not putting on a voice, he puts on the suit and then the voice just starts happening for him as a person as well,” Pattinson said.
Catch The Batman in theaters on March 4! Check out the rest of our Dorkaholics coverage on The Batman: interviews with Zoë Kravitz, Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark.
