[Warning: Spoilers for nonreaders throughout.]
By the time the wedding arrived, walking down the aisle as Bella was nearly effortless for Stewart.
"I think that I was so in the right place to do it that I needed to just put the dress on and go and stand there and walk and see him and everyone," Stewart said. "I know the story so well. The most common question for actors is, 'How do you remember all your lines?' It's the last thing I think about. If you know a story so well, they just come out, you just know it. So I just kept telling myself to just find [myself] in this moment and appreciate it, or else you're going to look back and go, 'God why didn't I just take that ride? Just do it.'"
Pattinson recently claimed the pair became legally married during the shoot because of the use of an honest-to-god priest, but Stewart's not so sure.
"Honestly, that's the first I've heard of that," Stewart said. "[The priest] couldn't even remember the vows. I think he was nervous. He was great. I mean, he did great. It's just that he kept saying our names as well. And I think he also called me Bella Elizabeth or something. He definitely messed up my middle name. Basically, that's a funny story to come out of all of this because that wasn't my memory of it. And was he necessarily a real ordained minister? I'd like to find out."
Edward's state of mind during the wedding was a pleasing mix of elation and anxiety.
"I think it's that whenever you're really genuinely happy you're also terrified because you're kind of out of control," Pattinson said when asked about the times in life when both emotions occur simultaneously. "I think it's the perfect level of happiness when you're also terrified at the same time."
You can cross a fancy wedding off Pattinson's to-do list if it means wearing something nontraditional, or having a say in the ceremony at all.
"I was just doing an interview with Kristen, and she got a little annoyed with me for saying that the groom's role in a wedding is basically just as a prop," he said. "Even playing the part you realize, it's such a clear indication of whose day it is when you're standing at one end of the aisle and the entire congregation is looking at the girl and you're wearing the same suit as every other guy, and she's in a princess dress. ... I really don't mind, I just don't want to wear a silly outfit."
The third corner of the love triangle gets another great chance to brood, but Lautner said Bella and Edward exchanging "I do's" should've been the moment Jacob finally gave up the chase.
"I go back and forth with Jacob's persistence. Most of the time, yeah I can understand it. Because there's been things in my life that I've wanted so much, and when you're told no you've gotta keep going, you've gotta go for it because if you're told no you and you just say 'uh, OK' and give up, I wouldn't be sitting here today," Lautner said. "If you believe in something and you love something, you've gotta go for it no matter what. Most of the time I could relate to it, but yeah there's moments where I'm like, 'Dude, you've gotta get over it, she's married now, she's on her honeymoon, it's about time to move on.' "
[Click for images from Movieline's Breaking Dawn - Part 2 gallery]
The climactic birth scene tugged a lot of heartstrings on set, according to Meyer.
"With the birth scene, you could tell it was so emotional. It wasn't about that this is gory and we're slathering up with cream cheese and raspberry jelly, it was Edward is losing Bella, and Rob's performance was so heartbreaking that, I am going to admit, yes, I teared up, there were tears," Meyer said. "A lot of people were feeling it. Because you looked at the idea of losing the most important thing to you, and he made you think about it in that moment. The way it was cut together was very emotional. I thought Bill [Condon] pulled such a human experience out of it. He has such a gift for that. I'm very happy about how it turned out."
Stewart imagined herself as a feral cat while Bella was pregnant. It's an apt description because Bella experienced so many major life events in such a short span of time that it's like she lived several cat lives.
Stewart said Breaking Dawn "crams a lot of milestones into one movie." "It was almost like within this series it doesn't last for a very long period of time, but it was a much more full experience than you really would ever get to have with something about a girl that age because of her unique situation. I really did get to live, like, 10-15 years in those four to five because everything's so important for her, obviously. All of the imposing elements just speed everything up and make everything very unreal. ... My favorite image every time I think about this installment, I think of, like, a cat in the corner, claws out, belly swollen, like, 'Stay the fffff away from me,' and it's so cool, and I would only really identify with that, yeah of course, I can't wait [for motherhood]. But, yeah, lots of milestones, really intense. Heavy, heavy."
Pattinson thinks Bella's birth scene is up there with Un Chien Andalou.
"It was terrifying going into it, but it ended up being one of the most incredible scenes to do in this movie," he said. " There's definitely a kind of R-rated -- or maybe NC-17-rated -- version of a few scenes in this movie. Because of the violence and stuff in it, it gave you a lot of freedom in the scene and having every character so desperate, it became something very, very different, especially for Edward, who has always held back and is a pacifist and objective and logical about everything. When you're playing Edward, who's stuck between an emaciated dummy's legs churned through a placenta, getting cream cheese all over your face and strawberry jam, and pulling out a 3-week-old baby afterward, with a wig on, it was like something out of a Bunuel movie."
Lautner's biggest Renesmee challenge was in how to imprint on the newborn.
"That was tough because what is imprinting? What do you look like when you imprint? Those were all the questions going through my head," Lautner said. "Luckily we had Stephenie on set the entire time, and trust me, I asked her a million times, 'OK explain to me one more time what imprinting is exactly, and did you ever envision what Jacob looked like? What was he doing when he was imprinting?' It was very, very confusing. It didn't help that when we filmed it, they put an X on a wall and said, 'This is Renesmee. You're going walk in the room, you're going to look at the X, and you're going to imprint.' It was tough. But now after seeing the final version, I'm really happy with it. It is emotional. They did a really good job with bringing back cool flashbacks and tying in a voiceover. So it realty is a very special moment but on the day it was a leap of faith."
Stewart's changed appearance in the film, during which she becomes gaunt and sickly, was strictly digital.
"Everything was sporadically shot. To do that [without visual effects] we would've had to shut down production for a couple months while I lost the weight or gained it back, whichever we did first," she said. "That it does make you feel a little bit like, 'I hope you guys do a good job.' It's sort of like, 'I can't do this part.' It can ruin you if you look ridiculous. But those [CG] guys are amazing at what they do."
Lautner's final day of shooting on the series paralleled his character's emotional goodbye.
"I knew filming the last scene was going to be tough, but it was more emotional for all of us than we expected," Lautner said. "It didn't help that my very last scene was with Kristen -- it was with Rob as well, but he comes in at the end and breaks it up -- and it was the last dance between Bella and Jacob toward the end of the wedding. Jacob's saying goodbye to Bella, and she's off to her honeymoon, and he realizing that it's over, everything I've been working for is over, and it's really time for him to move on and realize that. It's an emotional scene, we're saying goodbye to each other pretty much and that was the very last scene we filmed together so it didn't help the situation. I remember when we finished, Kris and I looked at each other. I don't think we had anything to say. Because the emotion from the scene was overwhelming us, and the emotion of the situation on top of that, it was tough, but it was a really special moment, and now when I watch that scene I have a lot of great memories."
Post-Twilight seems to be a good time for soul-searching.
Stewart says she's ready to assess her future now that the Twilight franchise is wrapping up. "It's the first time in a long time that I haven't worked, or haven't known what I was going to be doing, and I don't want to rush it because I want to have time off and figure out what I'm interested in. Not to say that I'm just going, going, going all the time, and don't even know myself, it's just that I want a little bit of time to figure out what I really, really, really want to do."
Lautner is taking a bit of a break after promoting Abduction and Breaking Dawn. He danced around the topic of whether a Gus Van Sant indie might be next on his list. "He is a very, very talented director who I've always looked up to and always wanted to work with," he said. "It's very premature, so I really don't have much to say now other than I really, really respect him and would love to work with him." Whatever his next move, Lautner said, "I want every [project] to feel special to me, and I'm very specific about that in a way -- and we've all said this to each other because we all deal with it -- it would almost be a compliment to be typecast because that's our jobs, our jobs are to make the fans believe that we are these characters. So in one sense we're trying to do that to ourselves because that's the goal with these fans. But at the same time, of course, as actors we want to be able to go off and do different things and challenge ourselves to many different roles."
A non-franchise flick was a welcome change for Pattinson, who stars in the 2012 David Cronenberg drama Cosmopolis.
"Smaller movies are great because you don't have to argue with so many people all the time, but really I kind of like arguing so there's a balance either way," Pattinson said. "[Cronenberg] is left alone by everyone because obviously he's proved himself time and time again. It's really strange, I've never worked with someone who's under absolutely no pressure from anywhere else apart from themselves and from the environment they've chosen to work in. It's kind of nice to know that the pressure is not caused by compromises, it's just they've taken responsibility on themselves and it's up to them to make it what they want and people get a lot more pleasure out of it than having to sometimes give up a lot because there is so much money involved or you're working on a franchise. You have to think about the audience and you have to think about the previous movies. ... It's a different thing in some ways."
Of course, there's a remote possibility that there's more Twilight on the horizon.
Asked whether she'd consider revisiting her beloved characters, Meyer said, "I've thought about it, obviously. People ask me about it a lot. There was a time when I thought I would never stop writing about vampires. There's pieces of their stories written, there's all this in my computer. Who knows? I'm not going to say no. Right now I really don't have much drive toward vampires. There's so much else going on, and sometimes you want to get into a new world. But the characters are always going to be alive for me."
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