“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera.”

Timothée Chalamet Is Missing the Pointe

In an interview, the Oscar-nominated—and LaGuardia-educated!—actor dismissed ballet and opera as art forms “no one cares about.” How could he forget where he came from?

By Sarah Hoover

Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

I had high hopes for Timothée Chalamet. I thought he was sophisticated, a city kid—a hustler who knew how to take the subway at age 7 and buy drugs at age 12 and who probably snuck into MoMA at age 14, without paying, of course (he needed the money for drugs, you see), to witness some of the ways that his forefathers and mothers changed culture for the better and made beautiful and enduring objects that transmute human truths.

What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t see any of this coming when, in a recent interview with Matthew McConaughey, Chalamet said, “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.”