Weeks after publicly voicing his displeasure with Primetime, Chris Hansen has finally watched the biopic and is still unimpressed.
Hansen’s Dateline NBC segment, To Catch a Predator, ran from 2004 to 2007 and featured Hansen teaming up with law enforcement and a group of digital vigilantes named Perverted Justice to confront alleged child sexual predators on camera. As the show became a cultural juggernaut, some criticized its vigilante justice and the hazy line between law enforcement and journalism.
In a pre-taped segment for his podcast, Have A Seat With Chris Hansen, Hansen is seen leaving a Times Square AMC after watching the Lance Oppenheim-directed film on Thursday night and offers his immediate reaction. “I can tell you that most of it is pure fiction. They mix in some reality here and there,” he said. “At the end of the day, I wasn’t blown away by it either way. It’s a movie, and I’ll continue to do the work I do, and people can watch this movie and make up their own minds.”
Speaking to Fox News’ Jesse Watters on his podcast, Hansen elaborated on his criticisms about the film, calling it “so detached from reality,” and gave Robert Pattinson‘s performance of him a “D” grade. (Hansen was particularly perturbed by the scene involving a shirltless Pattinson reciting lines in front of a mirror and called it “absurd.”)
“In a way, it’s a hit piece on me and the series, which is weird because all we do is expose bad human beings who try to hurt children,” said Hansen. “So in that respect, it’s sort of an insult to the thousands of men and women who go out every day to do the same thing that I try to do in Takedown and did in To Catch a Predator. But I think it’s so far over the top that it’s hard to come to grips with what they’re trying to do here.”
When discussing his take on Oppenheim’s artistic liberties, Hansen said the director “had a dark image of what he wanted to do.” “He wanted to create a horror-like film with interesting photography, and didn’t want to hear anything else. Didn’t want to have his mind polluted by anything positive that this actually achieved over the last 22 years,” continued Hansen, who said the film’s attempts to portray To Catch a Predator as small-time show trying to get to the big leagues was inaccurate. “They made it look like this was a show that was kind of hovering in obscurity, and it was about getting on a primetime,” said Hansen. “The show was always on primetime.”
Earlier this month, Hansen said that he had consulted with lawyers and hypothesized on whether or not Pattinson’s overly dramatic portrayal of him in a fictionalized film breaks laws. “Obviously, I’m a public figure, and the threshold for defamation is high,” Hansen replied to a question over Daryl Hannah’s similar objections to Love Story. “A number of things have to be shown. Are there other, more creative legal theories that could hold them accountable? Maybe. Is it identity theft? What separates this from identity theft?”
