Nathan Lane isn’t impressed with Timothée Chalamet‘s claims that “no one cares about” opera and ballet, branding the Oscar-nominated actor “a schmuck” for saying so.
During a recent interview to promote his film Marty Supreme, Best Actor nominee Chalamet, 30, provoked swift rebuke after saying in a recent interview: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera where it’s like, ‘Hey! Keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this anymore.’”
Pre-empting a backlash, he added: “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
Lane, a Tony-winning veteran star of stage and screen, commented on the controversy while on US show The View, stating: “One doesn’t want to give this more attention than it deserves. And yet, it was kind of kaleidoscopic in its stupidity and insensitivity, yet strangely telling about where we are in this country.”
He added: “One should remember people will be going to see Swan Lake and La Traviata long after someone at a dinner party says, ‘Who was Timothée Chalamet?’.”
Lane, 70, suggested Chalamet’s remarks were designed to promote Marty Supreme, which he called “that endless ping-pong movie”. The lengthy film, directed by Josh Safdie, is loosely based on the life of table tennis champion Marty Reisman.
“I got news for Timmy,” Lane continued. “If you think nobody cares about opera and ballet, I can’t tell you how much we don’t care about ping-pong.”
The clip of Chalamet’s comments, made during a Variety/CNN interview with Matthew McConaughey, went viral on social media and attracted backlash from opera and ballet stars online as well as rapper Doja Cat and actor Jamie Lee Curtis.
The View host Whoopi Goldberg previously said of the furore: “Be careful, boy. He is a boy to me. No disrespect. You can’t say, ‘Oh, this is dumb, no disrespect.’ That’s absolute disrespect.”
She added: “You come from a dance family, so when you crap on somebody else’s art form, it doesn’t feel good.”
Several members of Chalamet’s family have dance backgrounds, with both his mother and grandmother having trained with the New York City Ballet. Meanwhile, his sister – actor Pauline Chalamet – attended the School of American Ballet.
Chalamet was a strong favourite to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards on Sunday (15 March), but his odds have drifted in recent weeks.
Despite winning a Golden Globe in January, he lost the Bafta to I Swear actor Robert Aramayo in February. However, Sinners star Michael B Jordan is now the hot favourite to take home the trophy after winning Best Actor at the 2026 Actor Awards, formerly known as the SAG Awards, earlier this month.
Lane, whose film credits include The Birdcage and Mouse Hunt, made his theatre debut in 1978 in an off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He has won three Tonys, for roles in Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1996), Mel Brooks' The Producers (2001), andTony Kushner's Angels in America.
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