Timothée Chalamet Really Isn’t Going to Live Down Those Ballet Comments in Hollywood
Poor Timothee Chalamet is catching strays from his comments about ballet and opera earlier this year.
The Marty Supreme star was doing an interview and he ended up bagging on those two forms of live-performance. Following some prompt backlash on social media, a lot of folks have moved on. But, not Charlize Theron. She talked to The New York Times about how hard it is to be a dancer. And, unfortunately for Chalamet, she’s got a long memory.
“Dance is probably one of the hardest things I ever did,” the actress explained. “Dancers are superheroes. What they put their bodies through in complete silence.”
“Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day,” Theron continued. “That was a very reckless comment on an art form, two art forms, that we need to lift up constantly because, yes, they do have a hard time.”
“But in 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothée’s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live,” She argued. “And we shouldn’t [expletive] on other art forms.”
Timothee Chalamet criticized opera and ballet
In a conversation with Matthew McConaughey, Chalamet made the mistake of insulting these art forms. He was super dismissive of both opera and ballet. The Oscar-nominated talent realized what he did pretty quickly.
But, this particular cat was out of the bag. Still, the fact that people are still talking about this shows that the issue isn’t going away. Here’s what he said in Variety’s video.
“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,'” Chalamet smirked earlier this year. The star probably realized he put his foot in his mouth and quickly added, “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”
Opera-world seems to be doing good!
So, while this whole thing spiraled, there was some good to come from it. The Times spoke with the head of the Royal Ballet and Opera. Alex Beard told them that Chalamet’s little moment ended up helping their ticket sales in the short term. It’s surprising to see what can motivate people. But, if it’s helping support the arts, I suppose that’s a worthwhile side effect of its own!
Beard told the outlet, “I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet.” (That was probably very smart of the venerated institution. Also, probably inuitive to not join-in to the thousands of people on social media already giving him the third degree for you!)
“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,” the head man explained. “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!”
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
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