Yes, Kristen Stewart played a character eternally enamored with Twilight’s Edward Cullen. But the actress behind Bella Swan would have called things with Edward pretty quickly if she was in her shoes.
During Stewart’s appearance on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, host Amanda Hirsch argued that Bella was “a little desperate” when it came to Edward, because she was so “willing to change her life.”
Stewart defended her character and pointed out Edward’s own issues, saying, “Yeah, but he was trying to sort of control whether or not she made choices for herself. I would’ve broken up with him immediately.”
She alluded to Edward’s objections to Bella becoming a vampire as one example. “I mean, if I was like, ‘Hey, I want to try that,’ and he was like, ‘No, this is just for me,’ I would be like, ‘Well, this is also just for me: My whole life, without you.’”
“So you’re saying Edward is fucked up?” Hirsch followed up.
“Yeah,” Stewart confirmed. “I get the sort of protection thing, but you got to let a girl make her own choices.”
Stewart spoke previously to Variety in January about her take on Twilight looking back now. The actress called it “such a gay movie” on its premise.
“I can only see it now,” she explained. “I don’t think it necessarily started off that way, but I also think that the fact that I was there at all, it was percolating. It’s such a gay movie. I mean, Jesus Christ, Taylor [Lautner] and Rob [Pattinson] and me, and it’s so hidden and not okay. I mean, a Mormon woman wrote this book. It’s all about oppression, about wanting what’s going to destroy you. That’s a very gothic, gay inclination that I love.”