Surprising impact of Timothée Chalamet's 'no one cares' about ballet and opera remark
Topics: Timothee Chalamet
William Morgan
Featured Image Credit: ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Timothee Chalamet
Acting superstar Timothée Chalamet probably has few regrets, with his talent propelling him from minor character in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar to the top billing in a number of hugely successful independent films and blockbusters.
However, it is likely fair to say that the 30-year-old actor will have one major regret from this past awards season, where his table tennis comedy Marty Supreme picked up dozens of nominations across the major shows, yet failed to pick up many of the top prizes.
Well, that is, the 2025 Josh Safdie film appeared to be picking up steam by January of this year, with Chalamet picking up a Best Actor nod from the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes - but then the Dune star put his foot and most of his leg in his mouth.
In February, Chalamet made a comment about older art forms like opera and ballet that infuriated many people in those industries who viewed his words at a CNN town hall as dismissive. Then the awards success seemed to stop.
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Chalamet, in a wider discussion about cinema's continued success, 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.' All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there."
In the midst of awards season, this fairly banal comment caused a cultural firestorm for the French-American actor and sparked a debate across the media about respect for the more classical forms of art.
An Oscars insider told Naughty But Nice that this comment had reinforced the view among Academy voters that Chalamet was both 'difficult' and 'arrogant', a sharp contrast with the ultimate Best Actor winner, Michael B. Jordan.
But while his offhand remark about opera and ballet may have cost him dearly during awards season, surprisingly, it was actually a massive boost for the two art forms he had dismissed.
This has prompted the boss of a major cultural institution, the UK's Royal Ballet and Opera, to actually publicly thank Chalamet for making his ill-judged comment.
Alex Beard told the Times of London that the actors words had caused a 'fantastic' response from people who wanted to show that they still cared about these historic cultural institutions.
"I thought it important that we didn't issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet," he said of the response.
Beard continued: "We simply said 'Take a look at what we're doing, mate' - for instance, the fact that the largest portion of our audience by age is 20 to 30-year-olds.
"And you know what? Our post got two-and-a-half million engagements and half a million shares, just on Instagram. And our ticket sales got an immediate boost.
"So cheers, Timmy!"
It was not just opera and ballet companies in the UK that took advantage of all this free publicity, with the Seattle Opera also offering a discount to anyone buying tickets, so long as they used the promo code 'TIMOTHEE'.