Robert Pattinson, former fictional vampire and current The Batman-in-waiting, is handling social isolation as well as can be expected from any of us, really, as evidenced by the most delightful celebrity profile I’ve read in some time, courtesy GQ.
Pattinson and his girlfriend, Suki Waterhouse, are currently quarantined in an apartment in London, after production on The Batman ceased in the midst of the pandemic. Though writer Zach Baron notes that Pattinson is particularly well-suited to isolation, as he has spent most of his post-Twilight career hiding from the paps when not working, it seems that Pattinson is really going through it now.
There’s a lot in this profile about Pattinson’s feelings about fame and his career, but all of that is not nearly as compelling as the details revealed about the star’s seeming inability to cook food. Being famous means that even if you’re in a self-imposed isolation of sorts, you can still rely on other people to provide for you. A quarantine imposed by a global pandemic means that just like the rest of us, famous people are (mostly) on their own. This should be Pattinson’s time to shine, and technically, if one considers his current eating habits, I think it might be.
Particularly because Robert Pattinson doesn’t know how to cook:
Pattinson: Yesterday I was just googling, I was going on YouTube to see how to microwave pasta. [laughs]
GQ: That’s not a thing.
Put it in a bowl and microwave it. That is how to microwave pasta. And also it really, really isn’t a thing. It’s really actually quite revolting. But I mean, who would have thought that it actually makes it taste disgusting?
How are you actually surviving?
I’m essentially on a meal plan for Batman. Thank God. I don’t know what I’d be doing other than that. But I mean, yeah, other than—I can survive. I’ll have oatmeal with, like, vanilla protein powder on it. And I will barely even mix it up. It’s extraordinarily easy. Like, I eat out of cans and stuff. I’ll literally put Tabasco inside a tuna can and just eat it out of the can.
You’ve been training all your life for this, apparently.
I… It is weird, but my preferences are…just sort of eat like a wild animal. [laughs] Like, out of a trash can.
Eating out of a trash can is a choice, and if Tabasco and tuna fresh out of the can works for Pattinson, then you know what, I’m happy for him! However, it is more difficult to be happy for him with regard to this business idea, which GQ notes is either a “bit” or “performance art” or actually sincere. Pattinson is looking to make pasta as convenient and as portable as burgers, and so Piccolini Cuscino, a hand-held pasta concoction, was born. Wrap your head around that for a second, and then spend a few moments with this scene, which is far too long to quote here, but is well worth your time.
He puts on latex gloves. He pulls out some sugar and some aluminum foil and makes a bed, a kind of hollowed-out sphere, with the foil. He holds up a box of penne pasta that he had in the house. “All right,” Pattinson says. “So obviously, first things first, you gotta microwave the pasta.”
I watch as he pours dry penne into a cereal bowl, covers it with water, and places it in the microwave for eight minutes. He says using penne is already new territory for him. Usually he uses…well… “Do you know the pasta that’s, like, a little, it’s like a blob, a sort of squiggly blob?”
“Gnocchi?”
“No, no, no, no, it looks like—what would you even call it? It looks like a sort of messy…like, the hair bun on a girl.”
“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.
“There was one type of pasta that worked. It definitely wasn’t penne.”
Not that Pattinson asked me, but I think the pasta he’s referring to is angel hair, or maybe linguine? Just a guess! Anyway, what follows is a curious journey into the mind of a culinary genius, one who boldly adds sugar and sliced American cheese to tinfoil, and microwaves the entire packet. Riveting! I mean it. Read the rest of the profile here.