Whether you’re Team Edward or Team Jacob, it’s time to relive your Twilight fandom all over again.
The film series — which is based on Stephenie Meyer’s books of the same name — are all now available to stream on Netflix. Twilight first premiered in 2008, followed by The Twilight Saga: New Moon in 2009 and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in 2010. The fourth and final book was split into two movies, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 in 2011 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2 in 2012.
The movies center around the intense — and sometimes dangerous — love story between a teenage girl, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), and a century-old vampire, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who looks 17. Their relationship faces many challenges, from rival vampires and werewolves to Bella wanting to become immortal herself.
In addition to Stewart and Pattinson, the Twilight saga’s star-studded cast includes Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, Nikki Reed as Rosalie Cullen, Jackson Rathbone as Jasper Cullen, Ashley Greene as Alice Cullen, Kellan Lutz as Emmett Cullen, Peter Facinelli as Carlisle Cullen and Elizabeth Reaser as Esme Cullen, among many others.
From on-set accident to how Lautner maintained his abs, here are 20 behind-the-scenes facts you probably didn’t know about the Twilight saga.
Several actors were considered for Edward
Pattinson wasn’t always the frontrunner to play Edward Cullen. Before his casting, Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke also considered Shiloh Fernandez, Ben Barnes and Rathbone, who ultimately played Jasper Cullen.
“I did have a screen test and signed contracts and all that,” Fernandez told Interview in 2010. “Did I want the part? I did. But I don’t think I was right or ready for it.”
Related: 8 Actors You Totally Forgot Were in ‘Twilight’: Dakota Fanning, Anna Kendrick and More
As for Meyer’s first choice, she always imagined Henry Cavill as her Edward, per a blog post written by the author in 2007.
“I think I was [Meyer’s] first choice. That’s the rumor I heard. She wanted me to play [Edward], but it wasn’t up to her,” Cavill said on The Graham Norton Show in 2018.
A number of actresses were considered for Bella
Like Pattinson, Stewart wasn’t the only actress in the run to play Bella Swan. In 2007, Meyer’s frontrunner was Emily Browning.
Actress Lily Collins auditioned for Twilight, she told Mandatory in 2013. Michelle Trachtenberg and Jennifer Lawrence also tried out for the part.
“I didn’t really know what it was,” Lawrence said on a 2018 episode of The Howard Stern Show of her Twilight audition. “You just got like five pages [at the audition] and they’re like, ‘Act, monkey.’ And when it came out I was like, ‘Hot damn!’ “
Tyler Posey was considered for the part of Jacob
Tyler Posey, meanwhile, was Meyer’s first choice for Jacob, and he was in the running up until the final decision was made.
“I was up against Taylor Lautner, it was between him and I for Jacob in Twilight,” Posey said on The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2023. “It would’ve been huge, but I was really young. I was like 16. I wasn’t ready for that type of attention that he got.”
‘New Moon’ director Chris Weitz wanted Kristen Stewart to put weights in her pockets for a drowning scene
While filming Bella Swan’s drowning scene in New Moon, director Chris Weitz suggested that Stewart get in the pool with weights in her pockets. He assumed this would make it easier for her to appear as if she were floating to the bottom of the ocean.
Stewart was hesitant, so Weitz tried it out for himself.
“I decided to go down there in a wetsuit, weighted down, and I started to panic,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009. “I thought, ‘Holy crap, this isn’t fun at all!’ “
Weitz continued, “Kristen had a cold that day, so that was the last thing I was going to do — put someone with a cold at the bottom of a 12-foot pool with weights in their pockets. That didn’t seem like a wise move.”
Robert Pattinson almost tore a muscle on the first day of filming ‘Twilight’
Pattinson nearly injured himself in the early days of filming Twilight.
“We were doing the fight scene at the end of the first one, and I tore my glute — well, almost tore it, basically in my second shot of the whole movie, of the whole series,” he told MTV in 2012. “[They] had to get a physiotherapist to come in and massage my butt cheek for the rest of the day.”