The “Marty Supreme” star, who has long been outspoken about his desire to win an Oscar, once again fell short in the Best Actor race at the end of a ceremony that was ridiculed many times.
It wasn’t a great Oscar night to play Timothée Chalamet.
The “Marty Supreme” star, who has long been outspoken about his desire to win an Oscar, has been ridiculed multiple times for his controversial comments about ballet and opera, and by the end of the ceremony he once again fell short in the race for best actor.
“Security is extremely tight tonight,” host Conan O’Brien said in his monologue. “I have heard that there are concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet worlds.”
Chalamet has drawn criticism from the arts community in recent weeks after he said during a televised chat with Matthew McConaughey that “no one cares” about ballet and opera.
The second time this statement was made during the Oscars telecast was when Aleksandr Singh, one of the directors of Best Live-Action Short Film winner “Saliva Exchange,” said in a speech, “I believe that art can change people’s souls. It may take maybe 10 years, but through art, through creativity, through theater and ballet, we can change society.”
Some stars also discussed the controversy on the red carpet, with Josh Groban telling Variety that the controversy “coincidentally had a positive effect” because it “started people talking about and celebrating these categories of art” and “actually might not have happened if he hadn’t said those things.”
However, some of Chalamet’s co-stars have come to his defense. Kevin O’Leary told Variety on the red carpet that the actor was a “truly wonderful person” who had “called it out,” adding that his comments “gave great publicity to the Opera House and the ballet.”
Fran Drescher also told E! According to news from the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Oscar viewing party, Chalamet “comes from a family of artists and has been exposed to art all his life, so knowing him there is no way that he intended this film to be received this way.”
Who is 2026 Oscar Nominated ‘Marty Supreme’ Timothée Chalamet?
Chalamet was nominated for Best Actor for his role in “Marty Supreme,” a nerve-wracking drama about a brash upstart table tennis player who is unapologetic about his ambitions. The Best Actor Oscar ultimately went to Michael B. Jordan for his role playing twins in the critically acclaimed vampire film “Sinners.”
“Marty Supreme” received nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Casting. However, the film was a complete failure and did not win any awards.
Chalamet was the clear frontrunner early in the season, winning the Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Actor. However, after Jordan’s surprise win for Best Actor on March 1st, many Oscar critics abandoned ship.
It’s been a somewhat eventful awards season for Chalamet, who invited famous friends like Ben Affleck and Edward Norton to moderate Q&A sessions at his career retrospective in Los Angeles. In December of last year, a video of an interview in which he said that he “doesn’t want people to take things for granted” and that he gives a “top-notch performance” went viral, sparking a backlash.
His comments about ballet and opera, which he made while discussing the fact that he didn’t want his films to lose their cultural relevance, sparked a backlash late in awards season, drawing criticism from stars such as Steven Spielberg and Misty Copeland. Copeland attended the Oscar ceremony and participated in the musical performance of “Sinners.”
Chalamet has been nominated twice for Best Actor, for the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic Complete Unknown and the 2017 gay romance Call Me by Your Name.
Had Chalamet won for “Marty Supreme,” he would have become the second-youngest actor in history to win the award, after Adrien Brody, who won at 29 for “The Pianist” in 2003. Brody presented the Best Actor award to Jordan this year.
Did Timothée Chalamet’s controversy cost him an Oscar?
However, it is unlikely that Chalamet’s ballet controversy cost him the Oscar, given that Chalamet’s remarks did not receive much attention until the final days of Oscar voting.
‘Marty Supreme’ was a true labor of love for the A-lister. Not only did he train for more than six years in table tennis, he also produced a film and developed an aggressive marketing campaign around it.
“The last couple of years have reaffirmed the authorship that I had very organically early in my career, which is gradually whittled down in the entertainment industry,” Chalamet told USA TODAY last December. “If you’re not making progress in life, you’re going backwards.”
Contributor: Marco della Cava
