A quick peek at the internet and you’ll see that one A-lister has been dominating discussions thanks to his knack for telling exaggerated, not-so-true stories.

Who might this unhinged liar be? Robert Pattinson, who has found himself embroiled in claims that he is, in fact, a pathological liar, while promoting his upcoming film, The Drama, with costar Zendaya. The movie hits theaters on Friday.

The discourse is all fun and games — and Pattinson himself has even admitted to flat-out fabricating answers to interview questions. In his March 2024 GQ profile, the star of The Batman revealed that he’d often “make something up” during press interviews “in order to say anything at all.”

It’s performance art, in a way.

“I definitely do get a certain high from it,” Pattinson told his costar inThe Lighthouse Willem Defoe for Interview magazine in 2019. “There’s a little gremlin inside of me that thinks, ‘Just say something shocking. You’re only here for a few minutes, say something terrible.’ There’s a kind of perverse glee I get from that. But I’ve given my publicist a number of heart attacks.”

Parsing through Rob’s truths and lies can be a complicated feat — just ask Zendaya.

“Rob throws me off because you have so many crazy stories, and I know that some of them are true because I’ve heard you tell them over and over and over again to other people, like, exactly the same, and that feels like it’s the truth, right? It’s not like he’s exaggerating every time he says it, or whatever,” she told Pattinson in an Entertainment Weekly video that went live on Tuesday. “I don’t know ever what he’s going to say, and neither does he. So it’s a surprise to both of us.”

Pattinson’s history with lying has become a running topic of discussion during the press tour for The Drama. In addition to recently telling GQ that Pattinson would be “good on Traitors … because lying.”

In a Vogue video shared on Wednesday, Zendaya also asked Pattinson when he last committed a lie.

“This lying thing is really — it’s ruining my life,” he told the actress. “Why is everyone saying you’re lying about this, lying about that? I’ve never lied about anything my whole life.”

Pattinson jokingly added that he has since retired from lying: “I get a giant vein that comes on my forehead whenever I lie. So I had to wrap it up.”

When the Spider-Man: Brand New Day star dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 16, she dished on what it was like to work with Pattinson for the first time. This year, the two have gone from first-time costars to soon appearing together in Dune: Part Three and The Odyssey. Kimmel was quick to tell Zendaya about Pattinson’s penchant for lying.

“Robert, I’m sure you know this, but he’s a liar. He lies, and I don’t mean that in a negative way,” Kimmel said. “He’s told me stories on television that he later told me he just made up because he didn’t have anything else to say. And then it follows him around, and people ask him about these crazy stories, and he can’t remember his lie.”

Zendaya then told Kimmel what Pattinson said to her when they first hung out.

“[Pattinson] was like, ‘Yeah, I used to be a pathological liar.’ And I was like, ‘Are you being serious? Or are you lying? I can’t tell.’ I can’t ever tell,” she said. “Have you noticed that he laughs with everything he says? Like, whether he’s joking or being serious, he’s always laughing. So I never know quite when he’s telling the truth or not.”

Kimmel finally asked Pattinson about being a self-proclaimed pathological liar when he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 19. The acclaimed host shared a series of “patently false” claims Pattinson had made in the past, including “living under an archway in Venice, [Calif.], under trash can lids,” owning 1,000 suits and being a hand model as a kid. (Pattinson’s own mother denied that last claim.)

“It’s such an awful thing to follow you around, because I have said this to people before: Why would you ever admit this about yourself? It’s such a stupid thing to say. And now it’s part of my shtick,” Pattinson said.

So there you have it: Pattinson deliberately lies for the bit! And we love him for it.