The former To Catch a Predator host finally saw the A24 film and called it 'detached from reality' and 'a hit piece' in a video on his own YouTube channel.
Chris Hansen has finally seen Primetime, the A24 drama starring Robert Pattinson as him, and he walked out unimpressed.
The former To Catch a Predator host slipped into a Thursday-night screening at a Times Square AMC, then teased his reaction on X before breaking the whole thing down in a 20-minute video on his YouTube channel, Have A Seat With Chris Hansen. The short version: he hated it.
"It was so bizarre and so in-and-out of reality," Hansen said in the video. "Obviously, I'm not objective because the character is, you know, me, but it was so detached from reality or anything I've experienced then or now doing the investigations. I'm not sure what the point of it was."
He didn't spare Pattinson either. Hansen graded the actor's performance a "D" and said the screen version of him was "so detached, so unhinged, so dark, so unlikeable" that it upset his current and former colleagues. "He's got work to do. I'm kind of the only guy that counts for this, right?" he said.
Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim, follows Hansen in 2006 as To Catch a Predator grew from a Dateline NBC segment into its own primetime block. A24 has labelled it "inspired by true events" rather than a biopic, but Hansen read it as something closer to a takedown. "In a way, it's a hit piece on me and the series, which is weird," he said, adding that "most of it is pure fiction."
His sharpest words were saved for Oppenheim, who he says ignored anyone who might complicate a darker version of events. "He wanted to create a horror-like film with interesting photography and didn't want to hear anything else," Hansen said. "They didn't want to hear that Chris Hansen is a good guy. They didn't want to hear that this work is important."
The film is connecting with audiences even if its subject isn't buying it. Primetime opened in theaters on Friday after a Venice Film Festival premiere that drew a seven-minute ovation, and it landed second at the domestic box office with $8.49 million. Pattinson, for his part, has said he hopes Hansen eventually takes the portrayal as a kind of tribute. "I would hope the amount of inspiration his character has given a lot of people for years is some kind of compliment," the actor said.
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