At the London Film Festival on Sunday night, Robert Pattinson sat before cameras once again, though this time there was no cape, no fangs, no Gothic castle behind him. Instead, he was discussing Primetime, an A24 crime thriller in which he plays a character modelled on Chris Hansen, the American journalist who once lured suspected child predators onto live television under hidden cameras. For an actor who became famous for glittering in sunlight as Edward Cullen in Twilight, it is a startling pivot, one that places him closer to the murky edges of reality television than to the fantasy franchises that made him a household name from Tokyo to Toronto. The original programme, which ran on NBC from 2004 to 2007, turned the exposure of alleged abusers into a ratings sensation, blurring the boundary between journalism, policing and entertainment.

Pattinson, who became a father nearly three years ago, said the subject reached him in a different way now. "It's both the most terrifying thing that can happen to you, whether you're a parent, or even if you're not," he told the BBC, calling the crime at the film's centre "the most unimaginable sin possible." What makes Primetime unsettling, in Pattinson's view, is not only its subject but its method: a format that promised swift justice while also manufacturing gripping spectacle out of real human catastrophe. That tension, he suggested, is precisely where the show's legacy turns uncomfortable.

The film arrives in a year stacked with work for the 40-year-old Englishman, including The Drama alongside Zendaya and the summer epic The Odyssey, with Dune: Part Three and a long-paused Batman sequel still ahead.