Timothée Chalamet is in the pursuit of ping-pong greatness. Sure, he had to practice to play a swaggering professional table-tennis player in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. But whatever hooked Marty Mauser on the sport seems to have gotten to Chalamet, too. “I had a table in London while I was making Wonka,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in an October 7 feature. “On Dune 2, I had a table in Budapest, Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for The French Dispatch. I got myself an Airbnb in a town [around] Saint-Tropez after The French Dispatch, overlooking the water, and I was taking lessons there.”
In total, Chalamet practiced for six years — beginning in 2018 when he first talked to writer and director Safdie about the project (before it got financing) up through shooting in September 2024. During COVID lockdown, Chalamet removed his living-room furniture and replaced it with a table-tennis setup. He even worked on his ping-pong game while honing musical abilities to play Bob Dylan in last year’s A Complete Unknown. “If anyone thinks this is cap, as the kids say — if anyone thinks this is made up — this is all documented, and it’ll be put out,” he promised to THR. “These were the two spoiled projects where I got years to work on them. This is the truth. I was working on both these things concurrently.” Do you think he ever pretended to be Bob Dylan while playing ping-pong? The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
Related
- Gwyneth Paltrow Reigns Marty Supreme
- O Safdie Brothers, Where Art Thou?
- Prep Your Paddle for the Marty Supreme Press Tour
Does Kylie Jenner have a table at her house, too?
