Theater Kid Timothée Chalamet Really Pissed Off the Other Types of Theater Kids

In a conversation with Matthew McConaughey about the future of film and art, Timothée Chalamet “took shots for no reason” (his words!) at two of the oldest art forms out there: opera and ballet. In the middle of an otherwise astute answer about movie-going behavior and what today’s audiences seem to want, little Marty Supreme said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.’”

He then doubled down on being a dick, saying “all respect to all the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership”—which I guess is supposed to mean that there are so few ballet and opera fans that proportionally, they spend very little?

I confess, I’m not really a ballet or opera person myself! But if I were Timmy, I wouldn’t be slagging off two very expensive-to-produce and difficult-to-profit-from art forms if my industry shared those exact same features and was also on the precipice of becoming ever-more irrelevant. Artists and creatives need to practice solidarity more than ever to fight back against the concentration of wealth and power in our industries. (That likely David Ellison-backed merger isn’t going to help Hollywood, babe.) 

A series of other artists took umbrage with Chalamet’s weird hubris: Doja Cat mispronounced his name while criticizing his take; Jamie Lee Curtis reposted criticism and a bunch of ballet videos; dancer and choreographer Amar Smalls made a video making multiple astute points, among them, “ain’t nobody dressing up to go and see Wonka,” and Sam Taylor-Johnson, W. Kamau Bell, Poppy Delevingne, and others commented in support. 

Ballets and opera houses also had their own fun: The Seattle Opera offered 14% off select seats for its production of Carmen with code TIMOTHEE. The Met put together a gorgeous video, captioned “This one’s for you, @tchalamet 👀.” 

I want to say that I expected better from one of LaGuardia Performing Arts High School’s most famous alumni, but I think Chalamet might just be lashing out because he realized he’s not winning the Oscar next weekend.

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