Chris Hansen would have personally cast Denis Leary as him in Primetime instead of Robert Pattinson.
In the upcoming crime thriller, the Twilight actor plays Hansen, the host of Dateline NBC's mid-2000s hidden-camera segment, To Catch A Predator.
During an appearance on the Serialously with Annie Elise podcast, Hansen shared that he was not involved in the film in any way and Pattinson would not have been his choice.
He explained that he always envisioned Rescue Me actor Leary playing him while he was working on his own screen project.
"I didn't get to choose my own guy," he said. "Years ago, I had crafted a script and thought Denis Leary would be a good guy to play me - depending on the age of it all."
Hansen added that the Primetime team reached out to him after the project was made and offered him an early screening, so he's reserving judgment about Lance Oppenheim's film until he's seen it.
"A couple months ago, they came and said, 'Hey look, we're doing this, we'd like you to have some sort of consideration in terms of helping us with this,'" he shared. "As a reporter, it's sort of silly for me to talk about something that I haven't seen yet. My suspicion is that they used my name because it helps in a commercial enterprise."
He continued, "I know (Pattinson) is a popular actor, and I know the director is a popular guy. I also have some questions: What's Hollywood's motive here?"
To Catch a Predator, which ran from 2004 to 2007, involved luring suspected predators to meet with minors at a sting house, where they were confronted by Hansen, a TV crew and police officers.
Primetime, which depicts the rise and fall of the show, will premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September before a general release on 25 September.
Predators, a documentary which also depicted the show's rise and fall, was released last year. Hansen was interviewed for the feature.
