Blast releases a special TWILIGHT EXTRA issue of the magazine on Monday with photos and video from the event, a longer interview with Robert Pattinson, our movie review, and more!
SAUGUS, Mass. — The teenage girl came out of the Hot Topic store, eyes glazed with a silly smile on her face. Her mother ran up to meet her, just as the words started tumbling out of the daughter’s lips.
“He talked to me,” she gasped, as her mother smiled along but tried to calm the teen down.
“She has epilepsy,” the mother explained, “and I don’t want her to seize.”
Then she scooped up her daughter and hurried away, without giving her name, to make room for the next giggling girl.
Fan dedication: defined.
She was just one of hundreds who flocked to the Square One Mall north of Boston on Friday. The object of their fanaticism wasn’t one of the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus, but rather a soft-spoken, spiky-haired Brit named Robert Pattinson.
In the words of one indignant passerby who was turned away from shopping at the barricaded Hot Topic: “He isn’t even famous.”
Though Pattinson, 22, may not be a household name yet, to the fan community of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire “Twilight” series, (and hardcore Harry Potter fans who remember he played Cedric Diggory) he is second to none. Playing the lead male character Edward in the upcoming vampire film “Twilight,” the fan hysteria has reached peak heights.
Video courtesy of GateHouse Media
“At first I thought maybe he wasn’t as good for Edward, but now I think he’s perfect,” said Selys Rivera, 14, of Worcester. “He’s completely perfect for Edward. He’s amazing.”
Pattinson, along with co-stars Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Edi Gathegi and Rachelle Lefavre, is headlining the Hot Topic-sponsored movie tour to promote “Twilight” in the final days before the film’s release on November 21. The Saugus event was Pattinson’s third and final stop on the tour after the event scheduled in San Francisco was canceled after fans mobbed the mall.
Pattinson, Stewart, and the trio of Lautner, Gathegi and Lefavre toured to 13 cities across the U.S. from November 10 through November 15.
“[The hysteria] hasn’t died down at all,” Pattinson told Blast in a brief interview at the Saugus Hot Topic. “It happened in [Italy], it happened in Mexico. It’s completely ridiculous.”
Here in Saugus, the crowd was much tamer than the events in San Francisco and Chicago. Wristbands were given, starting at 9 p.m. Thursday, to the first 500 people who bought the Hot Topic official “Twilight” tour T-shirt. The Saugus police were no-nonsense about the event and were a steady presence around the mall throughout the night.
“We got here at about 9 p.m. yesterday and we were there like all night long,” said Attleboro resident Amanda Pease, 20. “We only left to go to Starbucks.”
At 5 p.m. Friday, a crowd of a couple hundred girls had gathered around a stage that was set up for Pattinson to speak to the fans for the question and answer portion of the event. Some had camped out for more than 20 hours just for the chance to meet their beloved “Edward,” while others had arrived only moments before to wait around until Pattinson spoke at on the stage.
A security presence was felt. A barricade was set up like a moat around the stage to protect Pattinson from the overzealousness of any rabid fan-girls.