“Not a single person got the job,” Pattinson joked to his “The Drama” costar during a round of ‘s “Lie vs. Lie.”

Robert Pattinson tells Zendaya about the bizarre request made during a failed audition: ‘Absolutely traumatized’

"Not a single person got the job," Pattinson joked to his "The Drama" costar during a round of 's "Lie vs. Lie."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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March 31, 2026 1:38 p.m. ET

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- Robert Pattinson relayed a wild story from a failed audition to his *The Drama *costar Zendaya during a round of EW's "Lie vs. Lie."

- "The worst audition story was, pretend to carry a rock from one side of the room to another in your underpants, a heavy rock," Pattinson shared, with Zendaya judged as true.

- Pattinson claimed the story was true, and from an audition for the 2006 epic *300*, but Zendaya later noted, dubiously, "Rob throws me off, because you have so many crazy stories."

The truth is often stranger than fiction. Robert Pattinson's storied career is living proof.

During the latest round of **'s "Lie vs. Lie," in which castmates employ deception, subterfuge, and all manner of trickery to sneak white lies past one another, the king of making stuff up swore to his *The Drama *costar Zendaya that one wild story was actually true.

"The worst audition story was, pretend to carry a rock from one side of the room to another in your underpants, a heavy rock," Pattinson proffered with a poker face. But unlike virtually all his other attempts, the *Euphoria *star clocked the story as true.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play EW's 'Lie vs. Lie'.

"You know how I know it's true?" Zendaya asked Pattinson, who, looking disappointed in himself, responded, "I told you already."

Pattinson claimed the odd ask came during an audition for the hyper-stylized Greco-Persian war epic *300*, which was released in 2006. "All the guys in England were doing that, and everyone came out looking absolutely traumatized, and not a single person got the job," he recalled.

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Though Zendaya's B.S. radar didn't detect anything unusual during Pattinson's out-there audition story, she did later clarify that there's reason to take *anything *the *Batman *star says with a grain of salt.

"Rob throws me off, because you have so many crazy stories," she explained, conceding that, "I know that some of them are true, because I've heard you tell them over and over and over again to other people, exactly the same. That feels like it's the truth. It's not like he's exaggerating every time he says it."

But Pattinson himself has copped to some outlandish fibs he's told in the past.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in 'The Drama'.

Courtesy of A24

He previously owned up to getting into the drug-dealing business in school, but selling "sawdust with Febreze on it" to older students in place of an actual narcotic.

In 2024, he admitted to a lie he told during a *Water for Elephants *press event in 2011 that he saw a clown die in a terrible car explosion. "There was absolutely no hesitation at all [in my voice]," he reflected. "I'm like, 'What on Earth? Are you possessed?'"

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Robert Pattinson and Zendaya star in Kristoffer Borgli's 'The Drama'.

Courtesy of A24

As for the *300 *claim, there don't appear to be any stories from the cast about a rock-in-the-underpants portion of the auditions. But Andrew Garfield told a funny story about Pattinson's old roommate, Tom Sturridge, flubbing his own audition for a part in the film.

"Tom tried to bulk up by wearing eight layers on his top half," Garfield revealed in 2022. "But during the audition, they asked him to take off his shirt, so he had to spend four minutes removing all of these clothes in front of the casting people." Garfield referred to the humiliation ritual as "the most brutal striptease ever."

*The Drama *releases in theaters on April 3.

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