Kristen Stewart confesses she ‘hated making’ Charlie’s Angels reboot

‘Twilight’ star led 2019 remake alongside Ella Balinska and Naomi Scott

Kristen Stewart has said that while the 2019 remake of Charlie’s Angels was a good idea at the time, she hated making the movie.

During a recent episode of Variety’s “Know Your Lines” video series, Stewart correctly identified her character Sabina’s opening line: “Did you know that it takes men an additional seven seconds to perceive a woman as a threat compared to a man?”

“Yeah, I remember saying that,” she said, explaining that “we wanted a strong opener”.

“We wanted to broadcast what the movie was about,” she added. “It was a good idea at the time. I hated making that movie. I don’t know what else to say to you. Honestly, the three…you can’t touch [that]. Cameron [Diaz], Lucy [Liu] and Drew [Barrymore]…I love that movie. I love that movie! If that says anything.”

The 33-year-old Twilight actor co-starred alongside Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska in the remake of Joseph McGinty Nichols’ Noughties films led by the iconic trio Liu, Barrymore and Diaz.

Nichols’s 2000 movie and its 2003 sequel – both adaptations of the original five-season Charlie’s Angels drama starring Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith – raked in a combined $250m at the global box office.

The 2019 reboot, meanwhile, directed by Elizabeth Banks, earnt an underwhelming $73m worldwide. It also received mixed reviews at the time, with several critics finding its plot “aimless”.

Ella Balinska, Kristen Steart (middle) and Naomi Scott in ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (Sony Pictures/Chiabella James)

The Independent’s chief film critic, Clarisse Loughrey, panned it in her two-star review, calling it a “toothless sequel”.

In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Banks posited that the film flopped partially because it had been “presented as just for girls”.

“So much of the story that the media wanted to tell about Charlie’s Angels was that it was some feminist manifesto,” she told Rolling Stone a year later.

“People kept saying, ‘You’re the first female director of Charlie’s Angels! And I was like, ‘They’ve only done a TV show and McG’s movies… what are you talking about? There’s not this long legacy.’ I just loved the franchise. There was not this gendered agenda from me. That was very much laid on top of the work, and it was a little bit of a bummer. It felt like it pigeonholed me and the audience for the movie.”

Stewart can next be seen opposite Beef’s Steven Yeun in the sci-fi romance Love Me. She will then play Lou, a recluse gym manager who falls in love with bodybuilder Jacki (Katy O Brian) in Rose Glass’s thriller Love Lies Bleeding.

Love Me will be released in cinemas on 19 January, followed by Love Lies Bleeding on 8 March.