Stephen Merchant Didn't Want Robert Pattinson in His New Film

Stephen Merchant Didn't Want Robert Pattinson in His New Film 5 comments

The Office’s Stephen Merchant has said he wouldn’t have wanted Robert Pattinson to star in his and Ricky Gervais’ new film Cemetery Junction.

The comedian and writer revealed he and Ricky chose to cast relatively unknown, up-and-coming British actors in the film about a group of young people growing up in Reading in the 70s, because they didn’t want stars like the Twilight actor stealing the spotlight.

Merchant said: “If you have a group of friends and one of them is Robert Pattinson, you’re sort of ‘This is a Robert Pattinson movie’ where as we wanted people to accept they were friends so we had to find new people, and these were the people we found.”

He added: “Everyone forgets that when we did The Office, pretty much everyone, including Ricky, was kind of unknown. Audiences sort of accepted them as real people, and even with Extras, aside from the stars everyone was relatively unknown apart from Ricky so we’ve always sought out new blood and this was really exciting for us.”

Merchant revealed the film is “drawn on lots of elements of Ricky and I’s childhood, but it’s almost a romantic version of our memories of the past.

“It seemed like it was a lot hotter and people seemed cooler and sexier than they probably were and there’s far fewer bad teeth than there were in the 70s.”

Speaking of working with Ricky again he joked: “I never enjoy working with Ricky, it’s always an exhausting process. But, as you may have noticed, I have never had success beyond working with Ricky so you need to go back to the fold. I’m always drawn back in.”

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