Your Two Boyfriends Harry Styles And Timothée Chalamet Had A Big Old Chat About Life
It's everything you need.
The powers that be — the increasingly out-of-wack algorithm that controls our world — has today manifested something truly beautiful: an interview of Timothée Chalamet by Harry Styles.
Over at i-D, Styles and Chalamet have had a good old chat ahead of the US release of Beautiful Boy, Chalamet’s new film in which he plays a meth-addicted youth whose father (a bearded Steve Carell) struggles to help him.
While we do gain some insight into that film, the chat’s pretty sweeping. Yes, the two talk about both working with Christopher Nolan (Styles on Dunkirk, Chalamet on Interstellar), Call Me By Your Name (both struggle to eat peaches without thinking about the film) and compare acting processes/experiences. Styles also makes sure the thirsty audience gets what they want, and asks Chalamet what he wears to bed (the answer’s nothing, by the by).
Probably the biggest reveal is that Chalamet is excited by the very likely Call Me By Your Name sequel and that he struggled most as an actor in the scene where Elio covertly discusses his feelings for Oliver at the war monument.
“The book is so genuine, so accomplished and well written that I felt like that one scene would be a barometer for whether we would pull it off or not,” he said.
“On the day, Luca Guadagnino didn’t quite know how he wanted to shoot it, and it was actually Armie Hammer who had the idea to do it in one take and in a wide shot. It took away the whole cringe Hollywood feeling. If you mute the movie you can’t tell it’s somebody telling somebody else that they are in love with them.”
But more broadly they touch upon big topics: the role of social media in the world as both political divider and uniter, and how they as celebrities don’t ascribe to stock-standard ideas of masculinity, and how older, often toxic ideals would close them and their art off to the world.
“I didn’t grow up in a man’s man world,” Styles says. “I grew up with my mum and my sister. But I definitely think in the last two years, I’ve become a lot more content with who I am. I think there’s so much masculinity in being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be feminine, and I’m very comfortable with that. Growing up you don’t even know what those things mean. You have this idea of what being masculine is and as you grow up and experience more of the world, you become more comfortable with who you are. Today it’s easier to embrace masculinity in so many different things.”
“It’s almost a high to be vulnerable,” Chalamet adds. “I really get that. I think it can be achieved in art, but also in intimacy. It’s the craziest feeling to achieve that vulnerability. If us having this conversation, in any infinitesimal way, can help anyone, a guy, a girl, realise that being vulnerable is not a weakness, not a social barrier.”
In short, they stoke more than just the frenzied keystrokes of a million fan-fictions — and while it can at times read like a conversation with Timmy’s pretentious Lady Bird character, we’ll allow it. Go read it, now. Oh, and stare at the photos of Chalamet, like this cover shot.
