Timothée Chalamet Publicly Praises His Partner Kylie Jenner: Will Oscar Voters Ding Him For Dating A Kardashian?
It’s a new year and a new awards season, so Timothée Chalamet must be back on the hunt for an Academy Award. He’s been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor twice before, and is expected to score a third for Marty Supreme, his latest bid to become one of the greats. (He’s already arguably one of the biggest movie stars under 50.) One of his earliest stops on the Marty Supreme awards circuit was accepting the Best Actor award at the Critics Choice Awards. (Full disclosure: I am a voting member of the Critics Choice group, though I did not attend the awards ceremony.)
Early-season awards-show speeches are often seen as auditions of sorts for the Oscars (which can backfire, at least in terms of providing a memorably spontaneous moment, when, say, Jamie Foxx has multiple chances to rehearse a call-and-response tribute to Ray Charles), and Chalamet certainly seemed aware of that at the CCAs. He shouted out his fellow nominees with a charming informality that glitzier/classier shows don’t always normalize, revealing that he only caught the mid-credits epilogue to Sinners on a recent rewatch. (Timmy, don’t be so antsy! Stay for the credits!) He also paid tribute to his can-it-really-be-that-long-time girlfriend Kylie Jenner: “Thank you to my partner of three years. Thank you for our foundation. I love you. I couldn’t do this without you.”
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Apart from causing some confusion from Amanda Seyfried, who noted in an Instagram comment that she thought he was referring to a specific foundation (as in a charity or equivalent), Chalamet’s mention of Jenner again illustrates his unusual current position in Hollywood as he begins another highly scrutinized awards campaign. On one hand, it brings unavoidable attention to the fact that Chalamet is dating a de facto Kardashian, which — due respect to their fame and accrual of absurd amounts of wealth through what Kim once regarded as exclusively her hard work — is not necessarily the image Hollywood may collectively want for its anointed next big thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with rapping about your billionaire girlfriend. It might just feel a bit more Chet Haze than Tom Hanks.
Then again: Chalamet and Jenner have been dating for, as Chalamet says, three years — and during a massive period of his career, at that, during which he’s carried five hit movies, hosted Saturday Night Live multiple times (while also serving as an occasional character on it for impressionist Chloe Fineman), and seems to be on his way toward a second Oscar nomination in a row. That is to say, their relationship appears pretty stable, at least by the perhaps-unfair standards of reality-show fame. Shouting out Jenner in his awards speech gives Chalamet the closest thing he could currently approximate to Wife Guy vibes, without the baggage of a too-young wedding.
It’s a tricky balance he’s looking for here: Chalamet is prized in large part because of his youth, yet male versions of ingenue rarely win Oscars. His award-season competition Leonardo DiCaprio took more than 20 years to win one for a middle-aged role in The Revenant. Chalamet feels like a New DiCaprio in a lot of ways; he’s probably less eager to emulate his years of bachelorhood. Chalamet has also worked a number of seeming miracles in recent years. Maybe, on the side, he’ll do what Ryan Murphy couldn’t, and turn a Kardashian-adjacent celebrity into part of the real Hollywood establishment.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
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