Will we see an Oscar run for Robert Pattinson for Primetime in which he stars as To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen?

Today in What In The Mandela Effect Hell, Robert Pattinson is starring in a new film from director Lance Oppenheim about To Catch a Predator and its host, Chris Hansen. This is a series of things I am VERY interested in, but we also have a mystery to solve. First, let’s talk about To Catch a Predator and Primetime.

To Catch a Predator was a reality TV program that ran for three seasons from 2004-2007. You might think it ran longer, but that is just the echo of how popular and controversial the series was for the years it aired. In the series, host Chris Hansen partnered with local law enforcement agencies and district attorneys to identify and catch pedophiles in the act of meeting up with minors. No children were actually involved, adults posed on kids online to lure the alleged predators to real-world meeting places.

If that sounds like entrapment, you’re not the only one, DAs were not always stoked to see Chris Hansen coming, and they had to tap dance carefully to avoid entrapment charges poisoning cases, and even still, sometimes their cases fell apart. The show existed on murky legal ground that haunts me twenty years later. At times, it felt like Predator courted thought crimes, and I stopped watching the show after a few episodes because the whole thing made me super uncomfortable (I also worked for an attorney when the show launched and she immediately hated it).

But there is no denying what a phenomenon Predator was, how it boosted Chris Hansen into the spotlight, and how it ended in misery when Bill Conradt died by suicide while police attempted to serve him warrants stemming from a Predator sting. The incident was caught by cameras. Though Conradt was featured in a two-part episode on Predator, his death was not broadcast, and the show was cancelled at the end of 2007 (the Conradt episodes aired in February of that year). Chris Hansen claimed the cancellation was unrelated, but NBC ended up settling a lawsuit with Conradt’s estate, led by his sister, six months after the show was cancelled. Hard to imagine these events were unrelated.

In Primetime, Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen, which would be enough of a draw for me. We love Robert Pattinson in these parts, he makes interesting and challenging choices as an actor, he gives great performances, he is, much like Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart, spending his post teen-franchise years pleasing himself artistically, and that usually works out for us, the audience.

But Primetime is directed by Lance Oppenheim, a documentary filmmaker making the leap to narrative film. Oppenheim previously directed the feature documentaries Some Kind of Heaven, about The Villages, Florida retirement community, and Spermworld, about online black-market sperm donation. Oppenheim also directed the three-part docu-series Ren Faire, which I cannot explain except that if you liked Listers, watch Ren Faire (it’s on HBO/Max). Lance Oppenheim makes documentaries about wild subjects but he approaches them with humanity and sincerity. I am VERY curious how this translates to the exploitative and ultimately deadly To Catch a Predator story.

Now, however, we must address The Mystery. Because I would SWEAR there is a true-crime podcast breaking down Chris Hansen’s history and To Catch a Predator. I don’t mean Hansen’s podcasts that he hosts, I mean I would SWEAR The Dollop did a deep dive on Chris Hansen, but I cannot find it. Did I imagine it? Am I experiencing the Mandela Effect? Have I just read so much about Chris Hansen and Predator over the years—Hansen was more recently involved in allegations of check fraud—that it amalgamated in my mind as a fake podcast I never actually heard?

I wanted to recommend this podcast episode before Primetime comes out later this year, as essential to understanding both Chris Hansen’s history as a journalist and Predator’s complicated legacy, but maybe that podcast episode doesn’t exist. If anyone knows what I am talking about, please help me, I am slowly going mad. In the meantime, I can’t wait to watch Primetime. Robert Pattinson Oscar run when!