why do we all think timothée chalamet is cringe now?
IT'S MARTY SUPREME (and the actor of a generation)
If you are, like me, a young woman who has at some point in her life had a crush on Timothée Chalamet, you are likely seeing these videos pop up on your FYP:
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There is a rising nostalgia for the “old Timmy.” Timmy in Call Me By Your Name. Timmy who dated Lily Rose Depp. Timmy who had floppy Prince Charming hair. Fans are commenting that “an angel [has] lost its wings,” saying he’s gone “from Timothée to Timothy,” and any clip from pre-2023 is “like seeing an ex.”1
To understand what TikTok stans are mourning, we must back track to the 2025 SAG Awards.
Amid his tireless campaign for an Oscar for his work in A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet accepts his award for Best Actor in a Drama by saying:
I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats. I’m inspired by the greats. I’m inspired by the greats here tonight. I’m as inspired by Daniel Day Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there. So I’m deeply grateful. This doesn’t signify that, but it’s a little more fuel. It’s a little more ammo to keep going. Thank you so much.
This felt uncharacteristic of the Timothée everyone had projected onto. Chalamet was infamously self-deprecating, appearing on Jimmy Fallon for the first time saying he “felt bad” for the audience having to watch him be interviewed. He was a man of the people, surprised whenever a fan wanted to gift him something or say something kind.
Now, however, he was doing something not even the most dickish of celebrities would do: proclaim he wants to be great. It’s more likely an actor would receive their award in tears or shock, stumbling over their words as they declare they didn’t prepare a speech because they were sure they wouldn’t win. As Chalamet says, “the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into [the] role.” But he doesn’t. He agrees with those who gave him the award: I was great in this role. I wanted to be great in this role.
In his allotted thirty seconds—take notes, Adrien Brody—Chalamet succinctly defines what would be the next era of his career: the consummate professional; the dedicated artist.
Fast forward to December 2025, and Chalamet is on a generational press run for his movie Marty Supreme, and it starts with a Zoom call. He whips up low-res ideas on a laptop with himself at the SAG awards as the background. He advocates for “hardcore orange, corroded orange, falling apart orange,” and declares the symbol of American greatness is a blimp.
This was, unfortunately for most, a solidifying of the persona Chalamet had shown at the SAG awards. He takes his seriousness—for his craft and his projects—and purposefully muddies it with satire. Chalamet understands that, at large, his passion is likely perceived as cringe and overzealous, and decides that he will admit that, lean into that.
Chalamet’s behaviour reminds me of this quote by Agnès Varda, speaking to the surveillance of feminism:
The first feminist gesture is to say: “OK, they’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.
Chalamet is surveilled not because of his gender, but because of his status. Young women and girl watch every move he makes, and want-slash-hope for it to align perfectly to the Timmy they fell in love with when they first watched Call Me By Your Name. Like how everyone is certain Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones are soulmates because of their characters in Normal People, everyone insists that Chalamet exist perpetually as a caricature of Elio.
We, as a culture, are so resistant to someone acknowledging their talent, nurturing it, unapologetically committing to it. So much we get the ick and decide that their effort is akin to arrogance. It’s like tall poppy syndrome—a thing Australians are well known to be afflicted with—has gone global along with our internet connections. No poppy must grow taller than the rest of us, and if it does, we shall cut it down, tell it to shrink back to size, ignore rising to feel the sun on its petals. Even among the stars, none must shine brighter than another.
A commenter on this video said it perfectly:
He’s living his best artistic version, dreaming big, creating fearlessly, fully passionate, confident and all in for the craft of cinema. If that doesn’t move you, then you’re simply choosing not to see it.
You must forget the Timmy you thought you knew, or understood, or crushed on. You must believe him and what he is telling us: dream big. And yes, I know you feel the cringe under your skin as you read the non-descript advice, and shrug it off like everything someone older or wiser tells you. But might we actually listen to him? I mean, one only has to look at the things Chalamet has done before age thirty to realise dreaming big might be the common denominator. Chalament has:
Worked with Greta Gerwig, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and Luca Guadagnino all before thirty;
Worked with Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Javier Bardem, Steve Carrell—to name a few;
Hosted SNL as well as being the musical guest, despite not being a musician;
Rapped a verse on a remix of one of the most popular songs of December 2025;
Reinvented the celebrity press tour (guys, he stood on top of the freaking sphere, got that big orange blimp made and rode a Lime bike onto the red carpet).
Instead of assigning passion as cringe and mourning a person that never really existed, appreciate what you are experiencing: an artist in action, setting proof of possibility, and just being fucking great at what he does.
get more of me here:
IG: @usingmyphd or @georgiannicholls
TikTok: @gnics
And let’s not ignore the barrage of misogynistic comments blaming Kylie Jenner stole his spark.
For me, it wasn’t about ridiculing him being ambitious. It is that he comes from serious privilege. Even if we ignore that, I wonder if people would be this defensive and encouraging of a person of color claiming on a SAG award stage that they want to be "one of the greats". Literally, Viola Davis, "one of the greats" he mentioned in his speech, has spoken extensively about the racial bias in Hollywood and how it affected her. In this award season, Chalamet is sweeping all the awards while Michael B Jordan has to smile and clap in acknowledgement of his speech. Sinners was a brilliant movie, and it is well-recorded that the mainstream media covered it with a lot of anti-black bias, while Marty Supreme did not have to jump such hurdles. Now, of course we can't expect Chalamet to do anything about the systemic issues of his country or change the industry, but a little bit of awareness would be appreciated. The way he's handled it so far has been quite tone deaf. That's what made it cringe.
I appreciate what you’re arguing re: celebrating ambition and hopefulness. But what I have not appreciated with this whole press tour is seeing his convenient embrace of Black culture as a means of seeming more relatable, braggadocious, funny and online. It’s partially a symptom of how thoroughly American culture has absorbed Black culture, but it’s also very reminiscent of the antics of the family with which he’s now intertwined. Like them, I don’t rly expect him to keep up the act once he gets the accolades he’s looking for.