Sometimes, you say something dumb. And often it just goes away, and no one really thinks about it a day later. You just said something stupid. But sometimes, when you’re a Hollywood actor, you say something dumb and huge swathes of the population band together to prove you wrong. Such was the case when Timothée Chalamet declared in February of this year that “no one cares about… ballet and opera”.
But apparently, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Talking to The Times, Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) chief executive, Alex Beard, explained that the A-lister’s comments weren’t that worrying for him. And in fact, ticket sales actually went up as support flooded in from around the globe.
What did Timothée Chalamet say?
In an interview with Matthew McConaughey, as part of the Variety & CNN Town Halls, Timothée Chalamet spoke in a surprising way about ballet and opera.
“I don’t wanna be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘hey, keep this thing alive’. Even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.”
But the Royal Ballet and Opera didn’t respond with negativity. As Beard explained: “I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet. We simply said ‘Take a look at what we’re doing, mate'”
Indeed, one TikTok video from the Royal Ballet and Opera that responds to the criticism has gone on to gain 2.5 million views and half a million likes. And in the caption was a simple invitation:
“Every night at the Royal Opera House, thousands of people gather for ballet and opera.
“For the music. For the storytelling. For the sheer magic of live performance.
“If you’d like to reconsider, @tchalamet, our doors are open.”
Over on Instagram, a similar story played out. The same video and caption received almost 175 thousand likes. Support filled the comments, too, with replies from the likes of Sadler’s Wells, the Opéra national de Paris, The Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Academy of Dance, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, De Nationale Opera & Het Nationale Ballet in the Netherlands, and more.
In the wake of it, as Beard explains, “the RBO ticket sales got an immediate boost. So cheers, Timmy!”
