Timmy plays favourites

American Cinematheque this week is running a Timothée Chalamet Retrospective, which is wild to me, LOL. He’s 30 years old, like freshly 30. Their rationale, however, is that he has four Oscar nominations, to date, and if you consider that of the eight films that are screening during this weeklong event, Lady Bird and Little Women (two best picture nominees!) aren’t among them, the resumé is impressive.

Obviously the retrospective is timely, given that Timmy is one of the frontrunners for the best actor Oscar this year. And he seems to be getting support from other industry players, like Ben Affleck the other day, and also Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Elle Fanning, and Edward Norton, all former collaborators.

Perhaps the most notable name on the list, at least in the immediate, is Christopher Nolan. Cinephiles are obsessed with him, everyone’s waiting to see how big The Odyssey will be this summer, and he joined Timmy at the Interstellar screening on Monday for a Q&A – Timmy was the one asking the questions. And he started off by saying that Interstellar has “remained my favorite project I’ve ever been in. It’s the film I’ve seen the most of, of all the films ever made in human history.”

This is worth highlighting because Timmy has a small role in the film. And he’s talked before about being devastated that the role became smaller than what he went in thinking it was. He and Nolan talked about this at the event, with Nolan also sharing that he didn’t care for one of Timmy’s takes:

“When you were filming the messages from home, there was a particular thing where you were hitting a dark tone. It felt too much for me. I didn’t particularly like it. I told you about it and you went ahead and did whatever the fuck you wanted and carried on. But I was like, ‘He knows what he wants to do and has an idea.’ It wasn’t about being stubborn. You had planned what you wanted to do. You planned your choices and you didn’t want to abandon that on a casual whim for me. You wanted to test that and challenge that and see if I kept coming back, which I didn’t. I’ll find a logic to that in the edit suite.”

I’m curious to see when and if Nolan and Timmy work together again with Timmy in a prominent role. It’s not like Timmy wouldn’t want to, please. It’s just a matter of whether or not Christopher Nolan lands on a project Timmy is right for. As for all of this happening during award season and the people Timmy’s been associating with publicly over the last few weeks, once again the takeaway is that he’s well-connected in the industry, and has already worked with some of the most revered filmmakers in the business. Whether or not that pushes him over the top in the Oscar race remains to be seen. You can watch the full conversation here.

Timmy was at the nominees luncheon yesterday looking more and more every day like Damien Chazelle. Seriously.

@oscars Best Actor nominee Timothée Chalamet graces the red carpet at the 98th #Oscars Nominees Luncheon. #Oscars2026 #AcademyAwards #TimotheeChalamet #MartySupreme ♬ original sound - The Oscars

Right now it looks like it’s been Timmy, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Wagner Moura, both of whom were also there. Wagner's monochrome wine-coloured set with the velvet collar has my vote.