Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar campaign for Best Actor has been thrown into a tailspin after he sparked backlash in saying “no one cares” about ballet or opera.
Chalamet came under fire after remarks he made to actor Matthew McConaughey during a town hall last month went viral on socail media. The two were trading thoughts the state of cinema in the age of streaming and AI.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this anymore,’” Chalamet said. “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
While Chalamet has not been without his defenders, the actor’s comments engendered severe backlash from the ballet and opera communities.
Over on The View, the co-hosts expressed disappointment over his remarks, with Sunny Hostin calling them “vapid and shallow.” Whoopi Goldberg told him to “be careful.”
“You come from a dance family. And so, when you crap on somebody else’s art form, it doesn’t feel good,” Goldberg said. “It doesn’t feel good to see, and you probably didn’t realize that until you said, ‘Oh, I’m in trouble.’ But then you compounded it, and said ’14 cents.’ No, when people get mad, it’ll be a lot more than 14 cents. So be careful. I’m just saying, be careful, boy.”
Comedian Patton Oswalt also joined the dunk fest while hosting the MPSE Golden Reel Awards.
“Thank God we’re here to celebrate achievement in sound editing and not watching ballet or the opera,” Oswalt said. “Thank God we are actually watching something that deserves to be alive.”
Some people have come to Chalamet’s defense, accusing his critics of unfairly trying to cancel him for remarks that were at least partially true despite the poor delivery.
“Chalamet’s point wasn’t that ballet and opera don’t matter, but that it isn’t really part of mainstream culture. He was dismissing these art forms’ roles in our society, and is he wrong? The value of ballet and opera, and people’s perception around their value, are two different things,” wrote Gia Kourlas at The New York Times.
“His comments were harsh to hear, but this is the frustration of working in the fine arts. The people who care about ballet, for example, care deeply. And most of those who don’t care think of ballet through stereotypes or quick hits of dancers on TikTok,” added Kourlas.