The Shocking 2007 Magazine Story Behind Robert Pattinson's 'Primetime'

Directed by documentarian Lance Oppenheim in his feature narrative debut, A24’s latest movie Primetime tells a behind-the-scenes story from the controversial 2000s Dateline reality series To Catch a Predator, which ran on NBC for three years, from 2004 to 2007. 

The plot of Primetime

An Oscar-primed Robert Pattinson stars as the show’s Emmy-winning news-journalist-turned-presenter Chris Hansen, alongside a supporting cast including Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, and Phoebe Bridgers. Hansen, across a total of twenty episodes of To Catch a Predator, oversaw a series of online sting operations—in coordination with a vigilante pedophile watchdog group known as Perverted Justice—in which men would make arrangements via chatrooms to meet with apparent minors, who were being impersonated in the chats by adult actors. Hansen would then confront the men at their prearranged meeting place, with the resulting confrontation (and, often, police arrest) caught on camera for an audience of millions. 

The series, perhaps understandably, proved controversial back in the 2000s. Not only did its fairly dubious legality and approach to entrapment laws come to be called into question, but many viewers found the way in which the stings were conducted and broadcast somewhat sordid and sensationalist. But that wasn’t the only issue that the series faced in its three-year run, with Oppenheim explaining that his and screenwriter Ajon Singh’s movie was inspired in particular by a devastating 2007 Esquire article that delved into the series’ most infamous case. 

The case that ended To Catch a Predator

The case in question took place back in November 2006, when Hansen and the To Catch a Predator production team, along with members of the Perverted Justice group, headed to the suburban Texan town of Murphy, not far from Dallas. There, they set up their hidden cameras and microphones in a house they had leased on the outskirts of the town, where over the days that followed an indeterminate number of men who had fallen for the latest online sting operation were confronted by the team and arrested by the awaiting police. 

One of the men, who had been communicating with a Perverted Justice member posing as a 13-year-old boy, was known online by the handle “inxs00.” Online, inxs00 claimed to be a local college student, but the team discovered that he was in fact Bill Conradt, a 56-year-old former district attorney. Believing that they had another victim, the production arranged for Conradt to meet the 13-year-old at the bait house—but when he failed to show up, rather than end the sting operation there, the following day both the police and the To Catch a Predator team traced Conradt to his own home. 

“We’ll never know why Conradt abruptly ended his conversations with the decoy,” Hansen later wrote. “But in the eyes of law enforcement, he’d already committed a crime.” That guilt was seemingly enough for the police and the NBC production team, all of whom descended on Conradt’s address the following day along with a SWAT Team. As the police officers entered his house, however, Conradt took his own life—all while Hansen and the NBC cameras were positioned outside. 

The case, which acts as the climax to Oppenheim’s movie, would bring the To Catch a Predator series to an end. In the aftermath, Conradt’s sister later sued NBC (the two parties eventually settled out of court in 2008). As for Hansen, he was not involved in the production of Primetime, and has recently taken extraordinary steps to counter its portrayal of him, the show, and the Conradt case. 

With audiences and critics alike now giving the movie and Pattinson’s performance rave reviews, it’s up to viewers to come to their own conclusions about how such a grim incident—and for that matter, such a controversial show—could have been allowed to take place.