Timothe Chalamet under fire for distasteful comment about ballet and opera
Timothée Chalamet may be one of the most sought-after young actors in Hollywood, but his recent reflections on other areas of the performing arts probably won’t win him any new fans.
Last week, Chalamet stopped by the University of Texas at Austin to be interviewed by his “Interstellar” co-star Matthew McConaughey for a Variety and CNN town hall.
During the course of the chat, the pair spoke candidly about a number of hot-button topics in the film industry. When the discussion turned to movie studios’ push to present “their biggest action scenes from the beginning” in order to compete with audiences’ shrinking attention spans, Chalamet offered a surprising insight.
“Some people want to be entertained and quickly,” he said, after referring to Netflix’s “Frankenstein” as a slower-paced movie that was successful. “I admire people, and I’ve done it myself, who go on a talk show and say, ‘Hey, we have to keep theaters alive, we have to keep this genre alive,’ and another part of me feels that if people want to see it, like ‘Barbie,’ like ‘Oppenheimer,’ they’ll go see it.”
“I don’t want to work in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this alive, even though no one cares anymore.’ All respect to all the ballet and opera people,” he continued.
After the crowd responded with laughter, Chalamet joked, “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took pictures for no reason.”
However, it was not long before a large number of ballet and opera artists began to criticize Chalamet and express their disappointment at his disparaging views on their art forms.
Amar Smalls, a professional ballet dancer and choreographer, acknowledged the inaccessibility of ballet and opera to many audiences in an Instagram video on Thursday, but said Chalamet was wrong to draw parallels between them and his experience in film.
“Tickets to the movies Timothée is in are cheap compared to ‘Porgy and Bess’ and ‘Swan Lake,’” he said in part, then added, “AI can’t go on stage and give a beautiful performance like ‘Swan Lake.’ But they could definitely do ‘Marty Supreme.’”
Amy Sussman via Getty Images
Opera singer and broadcaster Eugenia Forteza felt the same. “Live theater, opera and ballet could always use the support of artists with such reach,” he wrote in a comment on Variety’s Instagram post about the video. “Choosing to continue the misconception that these art forms are dead is irresponsible, disrespectful and ignorant, especially coming from someone who had the privilege of attending an arts high school right next to Lincoln Center.”
And Kameron Saunders, a ballet choreographer who was also one of the dancers on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, summed it up even more succinctly.
“Oh,” he wrote on Instagram.
Chalamet, whom many consider the favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in “Marty Supreme,” has yet to respond to the criticism.
His comments, however, appear to be in line with his divisive awards season campaign, in which he deliberately embodied the smugness of his “Marty Supreme” character while referencing meme culture and streetwear hype.