Culture

Sorry Timothée Chalamet, But Lucas Hedges Is The New Timothée Chalamet

This Beautiful Boy... just got Erased, Boy.

by Jared Richards  29 January 2019
Lucas Hedges and Timothee Hedges

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Injustices must be called out. Timothée Chalamet is overshadowing his fellow actor Lucas Hedges, and it must stop. Today, we make a stand. We’re Hedging our bets.

While we’re usually staunch believers of not pitting people or artists against each other — of celebrating people for their individual worth — we also accept that there can only be one mainstay white twink actor internet boyfriend at a time. And we believe that twink should be Hedges, not Chalamet.

And if you’re seriously about to suggest To All The Boy’s I’ve Loved Before‘s Noah Centineo should be the third contender for the title, then I am forced to provide some entry rules: they must have been nominated for an Academy Award, like Hedges (Manchester By The Sea) and Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name). Call me when Centineo provides a gripping performance in For All The Boys I’ve Still Loved, Will Always Love, And Will Kill For, or whatever the sequel’s sequel will be called.

An internet boyfriend is more than an attractive man. As Vox write in this explainer, an internet boyfriend is a celebrity who can look after you, a figure who, if they loved you, would love you with all of their heart. And while they use Centineo as an example, saying his basic wholesomeness and plain-but-hot persona made him the perfect, approachable fixation, we’d argue an internet boyfriend needs to have a little je ne sais quoi, too.

Both Chalamet and Hedges have it, though they differ in design — even though they’re both Beautiful Boys of Lady Bird fame who have played drug addicts. Yes, it’s easy to get Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet confused at first.

The two young, svelte white actors have both attracted accolades since they both burst to attention a few years ago — and played some similar roles and featured in some pretty similarly titled films. Perhaps, for you, the distinctions between these [beautiful] boys has been …erased. Vulture’s even written a guide to telling them apart, noting that they like different Yung Thug songs, and that Hedges is 22, while Chalamet is 23. Huge.

Then, again, maybe you have no problem telling them apart since Chalamet undoubtably remains more popular, having attracted a thirsty (and gay) fanbase since his breakout role as the sexually burgeoning Elio in Call Me By Your Name. Hedges first gained prominence in 2016 when he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Manchester In The Sea, but it’s a recent spate of noteworthy films — Mid90s, Boy Erased, Three Billboards… and Ben Is Back — that catapulted him into B-list territory.

But in terms of establishing their personas — and why Hedges is the superior internet boyfriend — it’s best to take a look at a film they both star in, Lady Bird.

 CALL HIM BY THE FAKE NAME HE WOULD GIVE YOU IN A BAR

Timothée Chalamet in Lady Bird

In Lady Bird, Chalamet plays Kyle, a confident, slick teen who plays bass guitar and smokes while reading socialist-friendly history books and uses the word “anarchist” as a complement. Surprise, surprise: he’s a classic fuckboi, treating Lady Bird with frosty contempt.

And that’s kind of Chalamet’s appeal, right? He’s cocky-confident, the type who can wear a sparkly harness with nonchalance or precociously rap to his entire high-school at age 15 as ”Lil Timmy Tim’ and somehow not get bullied.

He is the boy Fiona Apple warns you about: the hot knife through the butter of your heart. Whether he’s freely switching between English, French and Italian, having a D&M with Frank Ocean or Harry Styles, or just fucking a peach, Chalamet exudes cool. He conjures a thousand articles for reading a book during the SAG Awards — and his slim figure prompts The New York Times into a horny think-piece about how we’re in the ‘Age Of The Twink’.

Chalamet is perfect for pining: he’s effortlessly charming to the point of being unapproachable for most. He makes the slightest move and corners of the internet collapses at the knees, ruining their lives.

And just when you think you’re out, that you’ve had enough of his fuckboi antics, he hands you a rose, pays you a compliment. Or, more accurately, he signs up to the next Wes Anderson film, or he’s suddenly on TV, singing along to Mariah Carey’s recent collab with Blood Orange, as if he was created in a laboratory to generate keyboard mashing.

But is ‘JHGSADVBJHISVABLHVSRAB’ really want we want from our internet boyfriend? A desire so strong and pointless it is pre-verbal? No. We deserve stability, reliability. We deserve Lucas Hegdes.

BEN ISN’T BACK: HE’S ALWAYS BEEN HERE, WAITING FOR YOU

In Lady Bird, Hedges plays Danny O’Neill, a dorky teen who begins dating Lady Bird after they co-star in a school production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along. He is a boy who stutters around but springs alive singing on-stage.

During press, Hedges revealed that Gertwig gave him the choice between playing Danny or Kyle — the choice, for him, was easy.

“I don’t have enough confidence in myself to play that part, to play Kyle,” he said. “I was like, if I do this I will make a fool out of myself, because no one’s going to believe me. Also, I just connected more to the heart… they found the perfect person to play Kyle because Timmy, he’s just so mysterious and stunning and beautiful.”

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Which is true, right? Danny moves precociously through the world, in part due to his sexuality: he’s gay, but Lady Bird and him start dating.

Danny can smile in place of sentences, or, when the two later become just friends, often provides comfort through silence. It’s that stoic gentleness that comes through most of Hedges’ roles, a sense of deep consideration underlining careful movement, of restraint but not necessarily repression.

Speaking to Vulture last year, Hedges described how he recognised in his character in gay conversion therapy film Boy Erased a shared “sense of anticipating and waiting for anyone and everyone to be like, ‘There’s something wrong with you.’ It’s a story about shame, which felt to me like the governing factor of my life and my childhood.”

That apprehension doesn’t inspire thirst listicles (even though he is quite handsome), though it does explain why he’s repeatedly played queer characters with so much depth (Hedges himself identifies as neither ‘straight nor gay’).

Nor do his every move prompt a flurry of Tweets — where Timmy’s a fan of a floral print or something bold, Hedges sticks to your standard tuxedos on a red carpet, and is photographed awkwardly holding Apple headphones for some reason.

But awkward isn’t the right word to describe Hedges though: endearing is. Take when he’s promoted Ben Is Back on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and somehow started talking about singing songs from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Cats. He ends up performing ‘Rum Tug Tugger’, rapping through made-up lyrics like a child who merely pretends to be embarrassed when his parents make him sing in front of their dinner guests.

Having said that, we reckon Hedges could ruin your life too. Unlike Chalamet, who’d destroy you in a maelstrom, Hedges would ruin it slowly, like the love interest in a college bildungsroman, bumbling yet quietly intelligent, carelessly cruel over time.

As writer Louis Virtel once Tweeted, “Lucas Hedges always looks like he’s thinking deeply about what you said and will respond in three days with a wonderful poem.”

And that’s damn dangerous, in its own way. But Chalamet’s going to spit us out, and we’ll say thank you as he does it. Hedges will try: he’ll put in the work.

Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and has more than a passing resemblance to Lucas Hedges, who in Boy Erased played a gay character called Jared. It was a lot. Follow him on Twitter.