The fallout from a misconstrued comment Timothée Chalamet recently made about keeping shared, in-person art experiences alive is coming to define the closing stretch of his best actor Oscar campaign, as fellow recent nominee-turned-pariah Karla Sofía Gascón is now weighing in on the controversy with her own humorous take.
Chalamet, who has been promoting the hell out of his Oscar vehicle Marty Supreme this awards season, has swept up nearly every prize in his march toward what could be his first Academy Award win. But that campaign ubiquity may now be backfiring on the beloved actor after comments he made in conversation with Matthew McConaughey at a Variety and CNN town hall.
The offending foot-in-the-mouth comment came while the actor was discussing the importance of cinemas and the collective experience of seeing films in theaters. At that point, Chalamet appeared to overstate the level of life support needed to keep ballet companies and opera productions afloat today, while also perhaps understating their popularity.
“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,” he said during the Feb. 24 conversation.
Seeming to immediately realize the remark might be taken out of context — and ignite a backlash that could torpedo his Oscar campaign — Chalamet added, “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
The Chalamet pile-on came quickly. Opera singers Isabelle Leonard and Deepa Johnny said they were “shocked” he’d be “so ineloquent and narrow-minded,” and called the remarks “a disappointing take,” respectively. The Metropolitan Opera in New York responded with a backstage-peek Instagram video captioned, “All respect to the opera (and ballet) people out there.” Then came shade from The View, via Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin, the latter calling him “vapid” and “shallow.”
The actor is now receiving some unsolicited advice on social media from another highly lauded, then deeply loathed actor and Oscar nominee, Gascón.
Recall the lead-up to the 2025 Oscars, when Gascón’s film Emilia Pérez was widely seen as Netflix’s anticipated golden goose at the ceremony and expected by some to deliver the streamer a first best picture win. But Gascón’s past social-media posts resurfaced and contained inflammatory statements about George Floyd, Muslim culture and diversity.
In her March 9 post, Gascón and Chalamet appear as their characters from Emilia Pérez and Marty Supreme, made to look as if they were speaking to one another by phone — a reshare of a meme posted to her Instagram Stories. In the caption, she addresses the fallout he is now wading into.
“Hola Karla, do u think they’re gonna make me pass the red carpet at the Oscars?” the meme reads. Gascón added her own thoughts on top of the original post.
“Are you a trans woman? Then don’t worry about it, Tim.”
“Besides, I love ballet slippers, and I’ve seen The Phantom of the Opera ten times,” she wrote. “Not sure if that counts for anything. Best of luck with the awards. Even though no one has seen or heard me say anything, while they have both seen and heard you, people still seem to prefer believing whatever the bad guys claim I said.”
So will Chalamet suffer the same fate as Gascón at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony? She was all but shunned by Hollywood ahead of the ceremony during the press run to boost her film, which was the most nominated but ultimately won only two Oscars: best original song and best supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña.
Let’s hope, for Marty’s sake, the backlash dies down soon.