If America’s new Hollywood sweetheart is a man, it would be actor Timothee Chalamet.
On-screen, he brims with emotional vulnerability. Off-screen, he is goofy, occasionally shy and, sometimes, deliriously smiley.
‘Timothee! Timmy!’ screamed a crowd of hundreds waiting for a glimpse of him outside the Venice Film Festival’s Sala Casino in September 2022.
Many of them had been waiting three hours in the hot sun.
‘It feels nice to have a Gen-Z star who seems genuinely nice, whom we can all look up to,’ gushed one fangirl.
Indeed, it would… but what if Tinseltown’s sensitive new golden boy is only acting?
Movie industry insiders who worked closely with Chalamet on his upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown,’ claim the burgeoning superstar is, in fact, a raging ‘diva’.
And as filming wrapped on the project in June, several crewmembers spoke exclusively to DailyMail.com about the allegedly ‘toxic’ on-set environment fraught with complaints of ‘cruelty’ and ‘frat-boy behavior.’
‘[Chalamet] was hyper-paranoid,’ said a crewmember on the film’s Hoboken, New Jersey set.
‘We were not allowed to make eye contact with him or introduce ourselves.’
In one encounter, Chalamet allegedly flew into a rage and ‘cursed out’ a low-level production assistant who – while snapping a picture of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 – accidentally included the actor in a photo’s frame.
A security guard on the production ‘scoured her phone and made her delete all the photos,’ the insider claimed.
Just 20 minutes later, Chalamet reportedly forced the movie’s producers to send a strongly-worded email to the entire cast and crew prohibiting ‘all cell use’ near the leading man.
‘The production assistant panicked that she was going to get fired,’ said the source, who claimed on set security would browbeat anyone who used phones in Chalamet’s proximity, ‘even when using them was critical to aspects of their jobs.’
Additionally, Chalamet allegedly ‘hated when the crew watched rehearsals’ and harbored a particular loathing for ‘stand-in’ actors, who helped the lighting department fine-tune their setup before he arrived for a scene.
Chalamet even once seized a ‘restroom trailer for himself at the last minute, which caused massive lines and long waits to access the other facilities,’ on a particularly busy day of filming with 120 background actors and 150-plus crew members, according to Dailymail.com’s source.
‘He just didn’t care about anyone else except himself.’
When contacted by the Mail for comment, a source close to production said: ‘It is very common for principal actors to get their own bathrooms.’
The source also denied the allegation that Chalamet demanded ‘no eye contact’ and that he kicked anyone off set, suggesting that production staff may have told ‘people to not approach the actors while they are rehearsing or filming on set’.
The source did not deny that amateur photography was prohibited and insisted that is ‘standard practice’, adding that ‘if [a crew member] takes a picture of the solar eclipse, that’s not professional, and production would most likely stop you.’
What’s more, the allegations did not stop with Chalamet: overall the ‘hostile work environment’ was said to be rife with ‘cruelty’ and ‘frat-boy behavior’ —allegedly fostered by the film’s director James Mangold.
Mangold is a Hollywood veteran known for ‘Girl Interrupted’ (1998) ‘Walk the Line’ (2005) and most recently ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ (2019).
‘He generally ran one of the least professional and most toxic sets I’ve ever been on,’ said another crewmember. ‘It was fraught with disparaging comments along the lines of ‘this guy f****** sucks.’
The abuse allegedly turned physical when Mangold pushed a production assistant. Despite numerous reported complaints, he allegedly faced no consequences for his behavior.
‘Within his inner circle, [Mangold] openly mocked the complaints against him like a frat boy, saying, ‘Oh we have to be careful, or someone will call HR on us again!’ the Mail was told.
The source said Mangold’s conduct ‘slightly’ improved after he was reprimanded by studio representatives, but the change, ‘only lasted a few week’.
The Mail reached out to Mangold’s representatives but did not receive a response.
Searchlight Pictures – the film’s production company – issued a statement claiming, ‘These allegations are largely inaccurate and overstated. However, fostering a respectful and professional environment on set is something we take very seriously.’
Searchlight acknowledged that ‘some interactions […] took place early on set,’ and ‘issues raised’ were ‘immediately assessed and addressed.’
Chalamet was the only person on set immune to Mangold’s alleged abuse.
‘The director worshipped the ground that Timothee walked on because it’s his star power that bankrolled the film,’ one insider said.
‘On the last day of shooting, Mangold gave a speech all about Timmy, and how inspired and moved the crew was by his performance’ and ‘didn’t thank any crewmembers, just Timmy.’
However, the source said, the rest of the cast got along very well with the crew.
Starlet Elle Fanning, who played Dylan’s love interest, ‘was universally liked,’ as were Hollywood veteran of ‘Fight Club’ fame Edward Norton (played folk legend Pete Seeger) and Monica Barbaro, who recently stared in Tom Cruise’s sequel, ‘Top Gun: Maverick (Barbaro played singer/songwriter Joan Baez).
However, the Mail’s sources conceded that Chalamet must have felt an enormous amount of pressure taking on the role of such a fabled folk hero – especially since he sang and played guitar on all the tracks.
Dylan, who is notoriously brusque and prickly himself, serves as an executive producer of the film, which retraces his career – from arrival in New York City as an unknown 19-year-old to the heights of his superstardom.
‘There’s a lot of pressure to get it right. Bob Dylan fans are insane and will tear him apart if he gets it wrong,’ the insider said.
Raising the stakes even higher, Chalamet’s performance in ‘Wonka’ – a musical fantasy film reimaging the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – was universally panned by critics.
New York Magazine declared that he was ‘the worst part of Wonka.’ Rolling Stone wrote that Chalamet ‘bit off more than he could chew.’
That was a rare but stinging piece of criticism for a young man whose star has only risen nearly unimpeded for nearly a decade.
He first rocketed to fame staring in the 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama, ‘Call Me by Your Name.’ He became one of the youngest performers ever to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
With zero machismo, a beanpole physique, pixie-like features and puppy dog eyes, he defies the conventional Hollywood hunk image embodied by actors such as Channing Tatum and Chris Hemsworth.
Chalamet has quickly become a Gen-Z icon of a sensitive ‘softboy’ – a derogatory term for an effeminate, even weak, man.
A female critic for the news entertainment magazine Vulture wrote that Chalamet represented ‘cultural progress,’ and a societal evolution that finally gave women permission to ‘thirst after a feminine, twink icon whose heart broke just like ours.’
I-D Magazine praised him as ‘the perfect heartthrob for 2018’ for introducing a new kind of masculinity.
The craze was deemed ‘Chalamania.’
Since ‘Call Me by Your Name,’ Chalamet has starred in Greta Gerwig’s ‘Ladybird’ (2017) and ‘Little Women’ (2019) and landed a role in Wes Anderson’s comedy ‘The French Dispatch’ (2021).
But the blooming talent cemented his status as a franchise superstar starring in two ambitious films based on the epic science fiction series ‘Dune,’ which has raked in more than $1.1 billion worldwide.
Perhaps playing the blunt and abrasive folk singer is the perfect next act for Chalamet.
Dylan’s early fans famously booed and turned their backs on him when he ditched his acoustic guitar for an amplified Fender Stratocaster at a performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Could this be the moment that Chalamet goes electric?
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Source: USA Today
