Multiple versions of Timothée Chalamet: what dreams are made of. Well, those dreams came true last weekend when the “A Complete Unknown” lead double-hosted SNL.
It has been hard to avoid news about Chalamet recently — not that anyone’s trying. The recent press tour for his Bob Dylan biopic has been nothing short of iconic. Timmy has been doing what he does best: winning people over.
Chalamet’s opening monologue saw him embrace the humility that charmed the public in the first place. One of the first quips in his opening monologue concerned his lack of facial hair, playing into the ongoing commentary of just how young he looks. It definitely did not help with the trolling that his relationship with Kylie Jenner looks more maternal than anything else.
In his sketches, Chalamet first embraced the character of “Benny", who is just starting his new job at a coffee shop and has less brain cells than experience. He then took on perhaps the most challenging role of his career: playing Biscuit, a dog who loves “peeing on the blue mailbox.” This sketch included an intellectually stimulating conversation between the dogs of what they have been “humping” these days. Spoiler alert: Biscuit is humping a shoe and is not a “poodle guy” (ladies, take notes).
The highlight of this episode, however, was Chalamet’s musical performance. Rather than choosing obvious hits, he chose to perform “Outlaw Blues,” “Three Angels” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” He did not disappoint. Having learnt to play the guitar and harmonica for his biopic role, in addition to working with dialect, movement and vocal coaches, Chalamet combined his old-soul vibe with his strong Bob Dylan impersonation to give a powerful performance. As if two versions of the actor were not enough, he also brought four of his lookalikes from his recent lookalike competition to help him out with his hosting duty. The more the merrier! One of the lookalikes was sent to take his place at Jimmy Fallon in the promotion video: I can think of worse jobs to sub in for. But next time you see Chalamet on the big screen, pay extra attention to make sure that it is actually him.
In October of last year, Chalamet inadvertently started yet another trend — lookalike contests for celebrity heartthrobs. The star once again appealed to the public by crashing his own lookalike competition in Washington Square Garden. This was just the first, unofficial stop on his recent whirlwind press tour. Despite being a serious contender for Best Actor at this year’s Oscars, he has still managed to imbue his press tour with his charming, goofy and quirky personality.
Cut to more recently, we have seen Chalamet dabble with some memorable method dressing when he made reference to an outfit Bob Dylan wore to the Sundance Film Festival in 2003 for
the New York City premiere of “A Complete Unknown.” Even more comical was Chalamet turning up to his London premiere on a Lime Bike.
Outside of premiers, the actor has helped curate his “down to earth” persona during this press tour. Chalamet graced ESPN College GameDay back in December, stunning everyone with his knowledge of college football. The actor added yet another talent to his resumé as he stated that he was going “Jackson State,” “eight wins in a row” (not that I have any idea what that means).
Joining Nardwuar the Human Serviette in a video which has now accumulated more than two million views on YouTube, Chalamet shopped for records. Here, the actor showed how multifaceted he is (as if we could not already gather that from him playing Bob Dylan so quickly after Willy Wonka), as he picked up both “Brat” by Charli XCX and “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” by Lauryn Hill. The highlight of this interview, however, was when Chalamet, despite being paid nine million dollars for his performance as Willy Wonka last year, questioned nervously whether he was going to have to pay for all the records he had picked up.
Going back to his recent performance on SNL, Timothée Chalamet did make a joke about previously losing out to Best Actor at the 2018 Academy Awards for his performance in his breakout role in “Call Me by Your Name.” However, the odds are looking good for Chalamet this year, who has been nominated for the best actor category for his performance as Bob Dylan. If the Academy Awards are at all influenced by show stopping press tours, Chalamet is looking in an even better position. We will see how it will go — I think that a lot of people are still waiting for his performance as “Lil Timmy Tim” to get his Oscar for performance of the song “Statistics” which he made back in the day for his high-school mathematics class.
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