Everyone’s Crazy About Timothée Chalamet For Playing Opera And Ballet—So How Will It Affect The Oscars?

When Timothée Chalamet decided to bring up opera and ballet during his Variety and CNN interview with Matthew McConaughey, he probably didn’t think much of it at all.

“I love people—and I’ve done it myself—whatever you want to talk about is, hey, we’ve got to keep the theaters alive,” McConaughey said. “You know, we have to keep this genre alive. And another part of me feels like, if people want to see like ‘Barbie,’ like ‘Oppenheimer,’ they’re going to see it and go out of their way to talk about it and be proud of it. I don’t want to work in ballet, or opera, or things where, like, hey, even if this thing is gone.”

After this explanation, Chalamet quickly added: “Respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost fourteen cents in the audience. Damn, I just snapped for no reason.”

Turns out you may have lost more than fourteen cents in viewers—you may have lost A LOT of respect from your colleagues.

While arts institutions across the US, such as the Met Opera, were quick to speak out against Chalamet’s comments, celebrities would soon follow suit. Singer Doja Cat was perhaps the first to appear on Chalamet, posting a video on Instagram.

In the video, Doja Cat said:

Well, opera is 400 years old. Ballet is 500 years old. Someone named Timothee Chalamet had the nerve—a big guy, by the way—to say on camera that nobody cares. I’m sure you can watch an opera house right now, the seats will be full, and no one will say a word as the performance goes on because everyone is so respectful. There is an etiquette around opera. There is etiquette around ballet. It’s amazing. It is an amazing theater. It’s delicious. And people go there every day to the dance studio. Dancers show up at 8am, 6am, whatever the f*ck. They show up and show up every day just because they respect you. They love it. They love what they do. It goes without saying that this industry faces difficulties at any time, which many industries do. Your industry is having a hard time. My industry is having a hard time. It doesn’t mean people don’t care about it. People care. Dancers care. Singers take care of them. The audience cares about them. They are still the audience. People do f*ck. You show up in a nice dress, sit down, and shut the f*ck up. That’s the normal behavior in those things. Maybe you learned something from that.

Not long after, ballet dancer Misty Copeland addressed this controversy during an Aveeno panel. Copeland was instrumental in promoting ‘Marty Supreme,’ the movie Chalamet is currently facing an Oscar nomination—and a possible win.

Copeland says:

First of all I must say that it is very interesting that he invited me to be a part of promoting ‘Marty Supreme’ in honor of my art form. I think it’s important to acknowledge that, yes, this is an art form that isn’t as ‘popular’ and as much a part of pop culture as movies are, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have lasting cultural relevance. I think it’s often mistaken when something is popular that it has meaning or impact, and there’s a reason that opera and ballet have been around for over 400 years. […] I mean, he wouldn’t be an actor and have the opportunities he has as a movie star if it weren’t for opera and ballet and their parallels in that direction. So all these resources have a place and we should not compare them.

Even singer Charlie Puth had something to say:

I feel compelled to say that even if the art form is not at the peak of its popularity, traces of it continue in the music and movies that still touch people today. The popular music we hear today would not exist without the popular music that came before it centuries ago.

But it’s not just people outside Chalamet’s industry who seem to disagree with his words. While Matthew McConaughey seemed to understand what the actor meant, others felt his words rub them the wrong way, like veteran actor Jamie Lee Curtis:

My daughter has been a dancer all her life, my daughter teaches dance and has a dance school, so her comment is stupid, and I’m sorry it will become part of her legacy now. I’m sure you regret the comment because you can’t throw those art forms under the bus. You won’t do it. They are very important. Does that mean there is no shrinking audience for those art forms? I’m sure there is. Does that mean there will be destruction of those art forms? No.

There’s a lot of attention to be had when hosting the Academy Awards, just not as much as you might have hoped for. Chalamet campaigned to win best actor for ‘Marty Supreme,’ spending a lot of his own money and time promoting it.

The real question is: Could Timothée Chalamet lose his Oscar because of a newfound industry beef with him?

The answer is simple: No, it is not.

While Chalamet may have made the comments a few weeks ago, they appeared a few days ago. Oscar voting officially closed on March 5, meaning that if Timothée loses, it has nothing to do with his stance on ballet or opera—his entire career.

That said, it will be interesting to see how this latest scandal affects him during the Academy Awards this weekend. Will his potential win be overshadowed by public criticism of his attitude? Or will it make a possible loss more difficult? Will the media scrutinize him more than usual? And if he succeeds, which of his colleagues are willing to celebrate with him in public as many others continue to drag his public image through the mud?

Either way, one thing’s for sure: People will have something to say.