Timothée Chalamet has managed to piss off both the opera and ballet communities after saying “no one cares” about the art forms during a recent Variety & CNN Town Hall with Matthew McConaughey, even drawing a response from the UK Royal Ballet and Opera.
During a discussion about studios cutting the first act of movies due to audiences having waning attention spans, Chalamet explained he wanted to be right in the middle between “serious movies” and those made for pure entertainment, explaining that he doesn’t want to worry about whether there is a viewership for his work.
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Chalamet began his comments by citing Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 movie Frankenstein as an example of younger audiences still having interest in slower-paced films, saying it “pulled people in” despite the lack of “extraordinarily fast” pacing.
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“It does take you having to wave a flag of, ‘Hey, this is a serious movie,’ or something, and some people want to be entertained and quickly. I’m really right in the middle, Matthew,” Chalamet stated. “I admire people, and I’ve done it myself, [who] go on a talk show and say, ‘Hey, we gotta to keep movie theaters alive, we’ve gotta keep this genre alive,’ and another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they’re going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it.”
Then, Chalamet proceeded to put his foot in his mouth: “I don’t wanna 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. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.”
Acknowledging the potential backlash, Chalamet quipped, “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
Watch the full sitdown between Chalamet and McConaughey below. The discussion begins around the 49-minute mark.
After a clip of the remarks made the social media rounds, a spokesperson for the Royal Ballet and Opera hit back with a somewhat passive-aggressive statement: “Ballet and opera have never existed in isolation — they have continually informed, inspired, and elevated other art forms. Their influence can be felt across theatre, film, contemporary music, fashion, and beyond. For centuries, these disciplines have shaped the way artists create, and audiences experience culture, and today millions of people around the world continue to enjoy and engage with them.”
The Metropolitan Opera also posted a TikTok video featuring behind-the-scenes work with the message, “All respect to the opera (and ballet) people out there,” and dedicated it to Chalamet.
Grammy-winning opera singer Isabel Leonard was more direct in her comments (via The Hollywood Reporter), saying, “Honestly, I’m shocked that someone so seemingly successful can be so ineloquent and narrow-minded in his views about art while considering himself as [an] artist as I would only imagine one would as an actor.”
“To take cheap shots at fellow artists says more in this interview than anything else he could say. Shows a lot about his character,” she continued. “You don’t have to like all art but only a weak person/artist feels the need to diminish in fact the VERY arts that would inspire those who are interested in slowing down, to do exactly that.”
Chalamet will have an opportunity to address these comments at the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15th, if he manages to win Best Actor for Marty Supreme.
@metopera This one’s for you, Timothée Chalamet… 👀 #opera #classicalmusic #theater #art #culture
