Saint Timothée and the Itch to Be Bad or Himself?

The first time I saw Timothée Chalamet, I didn’t see him at all. He was the young version of Casey Affleck’s character in Interstellar, and I will be honest, I looked straight past him (sorry, Timothée).

Three years later, he turned up in two films in the genre I love most, the emotional indie picture, and I finally clocked what everyone was about to spend a decade clocking.

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Armie Hammer, Timothèe Chalamet, and director Luca Guadagnino in 2018.

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Last week, Timothée Chalamet did something that genuinely rattled me, and I do not rattle easily after 30 years of this stuff. I try to be unemotional in my approach to my work, but I am genuinely a fan of Timothée and think he’s the most exciting new addition to the entertainment world in the last decade.

But he became the face of Kalshi.

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And then, days later, in San Antonio on the thirteenth of June, the final buzzer of Game 5, 53 years of New York Knicks heartbreak dissolving into confetti, and there in the scrum is a 30-year-old man having a spiritual experience. He hugged strangers. He bellowed at the rafters. “Way rather this than the Oscars,” he howls. “World champs, baby!”

Two images, one week, both of them a very different Timothée from the one who built a flawless playbook into acting royalty.

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And he has the internet rattled. The fans were merciless: “Bro sold his soul.” “How do we go from Call Me By Your Name to this?” Media consultant Montaine Media even asked, “When did Timothée Chalamet turn evil?”, arguing he used to feel like an artist’s artist and is now unrecognizable.

So what happened to the young man who seemed to do everything right up until this year? And should fans be worried?