For a good while now, Robert Pattinson has been in his weird era. From Good Time, to High Life, to The Lighthouse and beyond, he’s long relished playing oddballs on the big screen. Even The Batman saw him go full-emo. And now, in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, he gets to take that instinct for eccentricity even further. Playing multiple ‘reprints’ of sadsack Mickey – an ‘expendable’, who has a new body created every time the previous one dies – he gets to dial up the unpredictability, sharing the screen with… himself. Because, in a mishap, Mickey 18 is created before Mickey 17 is actually dead – and their co-existance proves to be a dangerous thing.
Switching between portraying Mickeys 17 and 18, Pattinson had to find a way to differentiate them – including giving them unique accents, inspired by an unlikely source. “It’s a little like Stimpy,” he tells Empire of Mickey 17’s vocal tones, nodding to the cult ’90s cartoon Ren & Stimpy. “When 18 comes in, it’s a little bit more like Ren.” With every new reprinted Mickey, Pattinson imagines the character as losing a little something. “I just had this idea that he’s kind of like a dog with a complete lack of self-worth,” he explains. “He just keeps turning up, reporting for duty. But then I hope the reveal is that it’s a combination of deep, misguided guilt, and also survival. It’s him just saying, ‘I’ll just keep lowering my expectations the whole time.’”
As it happends, channelling Ren & Stimpy wasn’t Pattinson’s first choice for his Mickey voices. “My initial idea was to do impressions of Steve-O and Johnny Knoxville [from Jackass],” he chuckles. “I love Steve-O’s voice. We did it on the first read-through. And Bong was like, ‘That voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.’ I was like, ‘Is that a good thing?’ He was like, ‘No.’” Don’t try this at home.
Read Empire’s full Mickey 17 feature – speaking to Bong Joon Ho, Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun and Naomi Ackie about their oddball sci-fi odyssey – in the December 2024 issue, on sale Thursday 24 October. Pre-order a copy online here. Mickey 17 comes to UK cinemas from 31 January.