Taylor Lautner's Twilight Rivalry With Robert Pattinson Wasn't Just On Screen
Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson were pitted against each other in "The Twilight Saga," as Jacob Black and Edward Cullen were both in love with the same girl. As the story goes, Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, falls in love with vampire Edward (Pattinson) while also having some conflicting feelings about her best friend Jacob (Lautner), who happens to be a werewolf. Throughout the series, there are moments that have Bella wavering back and forth between the two guys, but she ultimately follows her heart and ends up with her true love — Edward.
Meanwhile, in real life, the threesome seemed inseparable on red carpets and truly appeared to form a tight bond despite their on-screen adversities. And, of course, Stewart and Pattinson ended up dating, which sent the fandom into a frenzy. And while that didn't cause any sort of friction between the actors, Lautner admits that there was sort of an unspoken rivalry between himself and Pattinson.
The Twilight fandom affected the actors off-screen
Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner were fairly young when taking on their roles in "The Twilight Saga," and that made things tricky for them, according to Lautner. During a February episode of "The Toast" podcast, Lautner explained that dynamic a bit. Even before the movies came out, fans were super passionate about whether they were "#TeamEdward" or "#TeamJacob," and that rolled into real life for the actors. "I do feel like it was very strange traveling the world and being in different cities and having thousands of screaming fans either taking your side or the other guy's side," Lautner explained. "Like, we're a team. We're both just trying to make the best movies. It was a little bizarre, the competitiveness. There wasn't a competitiveness between me and Rob, but having that constant reminder, it definitely had an impact," he explained.
Interestingly, Pattinson expressed a different kind of competitive feeling when discussing the films in an interview with a Mexican outlet in 2011. "I had never been so worried about [how I was going to look] before, but after seeing how much Taylor works out for the movies, I thought, 'Well, everybody is really going to judge me now,'" he told the magazine, according to Huff Post.
Fortunately for Pattinson, the fans couldn't have cared less.