Kristen Stewart looked back at ‘Twilight’ and called her younger self a pretentious little loser, speaking on the ‘In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele’ podcast released on Friday, 14 August 2026.
The 36-year-old actor played Bella Swan opposite Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen in the 2008 film that launched the Twilight franchise, as reported by Page Six.
The pair treated the teen vampire romance as if it were serious literature.
Stewart sat down with host Owen Thiele for the episode and the conversation swung back to the film that made her a household name.
She did not soften the memory of how she carried herself on a set that was about to explode into a franchise.
How Kristen Stewart remembered her ‘Twilight’ self
The verdict she handed her teenage self was not a kind one.
Stewart said the version of her who showed up to play Bella treated the job with the sort of solemnity usually reserved for prestige drama. Stewart put it bluntly on the podcast:
“I was like such a pretentious little loser.”
Bella Swan was a teenager caught between a vampire and her own small-town life, and the script asked Stewart to carry most of that longing in silence. Playing it straight was arguably the only way it could work, but the intensity behind the camera was apparently something else.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson took ‘Twilight’ very seriously
Stewart was 17 during the shoot and Pattinson was in his early twenties, and neither had any idea the film would turn them into two of the most photographed people alive.
Stewart said the mood on set was heavy with purpose, and she summed up the atmosphere in five words:
“It was so so serious.”
The franchise ran to five films and turned a young-adult book series into a global machine, with fan queues, red carpets and paparazzi following the two leads everywhere.
Stewart and Pattinson dated for several years after meeting on set, which only fed the frenzy around them.
Where Kristen Stewart went after ‘Twilight’
The years after the saga saw Stewart pick smaller, stranger projects, building a career in independent cinema that put plenty of distance between her and Forks, Washington.
The teenage seriousness she mocked on the podcast arguably became the engine of the career that followed.
Stewart showed no interest in defending her teenage self on the podcast, which suggests the Twilight retrospectives will keep coming as the first film heads towards its 20th anniversary in 2028.
The episode was released in full on Friday, 14 August 2026, and the clips did the rest.
