Timothee Chalamet Sets Off Tempest in a Teapot

Timothée Chalamet didn't mean to start a culture war with an offhand line about ballet and opera, but here we are. In a recent interview with Matthew McConaughey, the 30-year-old Oscar nominee said he didn't want to end up working in "ballet or opera" trying to "keep this thing alive even though no one cares about this any more." He quickly tacked on "all respect" to those art forms and joked he'd just lost "14 cents in viewership," reports the BBC, but the damage was done. An opera singer called the comments "cheap shots" that revealed "a lot about his character," a theater critic labeled him "an absolute fool," and a pop culture podcast asked if the "Timothée era" had just slammed shut. On Saturday Night Live, Colin Jost joked that Chalamet "made the comment on a press tour for his movie about ... ping-pong," per Yahoo Entertainment.

Opera houses and ballet companies pushed back—and cashed in. Seattle Opera offered 14% off tickets to Carmen with promo code "TIMOTHEE," telling him, "Timmy, you're welcome to use it too." While Chalamet's suggestion that audiences are shrinking has some statistical backing—US opera attendance dropped to 0.7% in 2022, ballet and dance to 4.7%—critics argued he was punching down on fellow artists. Supporters counter that he was really fretting about movies becoming niche in the era of streaming, and point to his dancer-filled family as proof he knows the world he knocked.

All this lands days before the Oscars, where Chalamet is up for best actor for Marty Supreme but has recently lost momentum to Sinners star Michael B. Jordan. Awards watchers say the backlash likely won't decide the race—voting closed as the uproar peaked—but it feeds a broader sense that some viewers have cooled on Chalamet's public persona, torn between swaggering box-office showman and earnest "serious actor." As one Oscars chronicler put it, he "deserves an Oscar," but right now, to some, he looks like "a young, obnoxious person." Problem is, he's not wrong, writes longtime arts critic Jessica Gelt at the Los Angeles Times, who notes that, "My hot take on Chalamet's hot take on opera and ballet will likely be more clicked on than any number of stories I've written over the years about opera and ballet."