Timothée Chalamet Is A Horse | Extended Interview | The Graham Norton Show

Saoirse and Timothy, now you know each other. Yeah, we're best friends. Well, you might. Are you? I don't know. We're as close as we could be. Okay. No, you met on Lady Bird. You met on Lady Bird. Did you know each other before that? Yeah, we met on Lady Bird. And we've kind of just been together ever since because we ended up doing press together after that. And what's the story with you calling Timothy Pony? That's not a thing, is it? You said it was a thing. No, what happened was we were doing an interview when Timmy was doing stuff for Call Me By Your Name and I was doing stuff for Lady Bird. We did an interview and I said in the interview that Timmy is like a horse. He'll just come up to you and he'll just sort of nuzzle you just randomly. And I think of him as a boy horse. He's like a pony. So it's not a thing. But I'm not like, hey pony. That's weird. Yeah, no, you'd never do that. Actually, I meant to say Timothy. It's pronounced Timothy. It's whatever you'd like. No, because I always thought I don't know if you guys, I thought it was Timote because of the double E's at the end. It's supposed to be but you could say Doug, Alex, Rick, whatever works. I like guests like this. Remembering names is half my job. Doug Chalamet. Does not work as well. Doug. But you are fluent in the French. Yeah, yes. Let's say 97%. I always give myself a little stopgap because it's not perfect. Now, Timothy Chalamet's movie has been earning rave reviews. Congratulations. As well as the Golden Globe nomination and our BAFTA nomination. It's called Beautiful Boy. It also opens tonight. And now it's a story of addiction, but it's sort of an addiction we haven't seen before, I don't think. Well, I think what's hopefully new about this film is it's through the prism of a family member, David Sheff, who's played by Steve Carell. And if we've had first-hand addiction movies, you think of Trainspotting or Christiane F., Heaven Knows What, this is told from the lens of a father and how devastating addiction can be to a family, alcoholism as well. And hopefully it's a reflection of what a lot of people are going through right now. But it's a weird... The father wrote a memoir and the son wrote a memoir. Yes, so David Sheff wrote Beautiful Boy, which is what the movie favors, perspective-wise. And then Nick wrote a memoir called Tweak that's much more present tense. This happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. And often I think the stories about drug addiction, they're based on some sort of deprivation or you can see why somebody fell ill. But on the face of it, you know, Nick has this charmed life. Yeah, the why of the addiction in this movie doesn't matter as much as the is. He just is addicted. This isn't about why someone gets addicted. It's not about the stereotype of a moral failing when someone gets addicted. It's about the horror of going through it. Someone said it to me like, and I liked how they said it, they said it's one of my favorite horror movies I've seen this year. And I like saying that to a watching audience as well because I don't want to like sell it in any false way. It's not like the most uplifting film in the world at all. But I do feel it's important because in England as well, I'm sure, but especially in America where I'm from, you have a lot of people that are going through this right now with opiates and methamphetamine as well, like in the movie. So not to make this all very serious. Yeah, but Nick Sheff is still with us and you met him. Yeah, he's alive and well. He's 8 years sober now. But he was, you know, he had 13 relapses over 7 years. But that's Nick right there. And it seems that you were a proper fan of Steve Carrell's before this. Oh, I'm a big Steve Carrell fan. Yeah, yeah. There's another fan over there. And did you walk on set and kind of go, I love you? No, it's something on Lady Bird I had to deal with Saoirse too is like when you look up to people and admire them and you're kind of a weirdo yourself, like you just don't want to play your cards. So I was just suspiciously like this with him. But once we've been talking about him promoting it, he knows now how creepy and obsessed I am. That's good. It's interesting that you have you're having so much success and sort of popular success with films that on the face of it you don't think would kind of resonate in the way that they have, like this, or Call Me By Your Name. I mean, how surprised were you when that film found this huge audience? No, absolutely. And I, man, that's why I'm so honored to be up here with you, Laura, as well. I love movies. I love acting. I love going to movies. I was kind of getting scared when I was younger that maybe it was becoming like opera or something, like an outdated art form or something. And you see like Saoirse's movies, you see Laura's movies, you see Stephen's, like, you know, these are great. Hopefully these are great things for the way forward. And yourself and Armie Hammer, when you were in Call Me By Your Name, there you are, yay! And you get this wonderful opportunity. You go off to Italy to make it. But it sounds like the director really threw you in at the deep end. Yes, this is true. So, day one, had you done anything? No, we had a rehearsal with Armie that you know, we basically had to break the ice. And Armie tells the story way better than I do, but we had to do a rehearsal outside. And Luca made it seem very spur of the moment like we were going to rehearse any scene. But then once we got outside, he had a very specific page number to turn to. It happened to be the first make-out in the movie, the first kiss. So Armie and I were kind of like, all right, here we go. And like, so Luca said, you know, dive into it. And we started making out. And there was no stop. There was no, like, cut. So we waited like a minute or two minutes and then stopped making out and Luca was gone. So we've had winner, winner, winner. Now, Timothy, you didn't win. You didn't win. But what was the competition? I'm talking about your effort to do well in, was it an exam about statistics? Oh, God. Christ, yes. This is true. I got a D on that, yeah. You got a D? I got a D, but I mean, I deserve that or worse. But anyway, so you're in school, you're doing an exam of statistics. Your teacher, she's Miss Lawton. Yes, Lawton. Lawton, Miss Lawton. And so what were the other kids doing? Were the other kids just doing... Yeah, variation. I mean, some people presented parabolas and things that were more appropriate for statistics. You know, varied projects. Mine was not. So tell the people what you decided to do. Like a statistics song? Yes, a sort of statistics rap. Yeah, horrible, bad, bad level, worst level. But no, but you came up with a whole rap persona, didn't you? Yeah, but not for that. I just had it. Oh. So, is it Lil Timmy Tim? Yeah, it's part of my... Oh, you're going to regret this. Gingerbread Man is nothing now. How do we have this film? Did you post it? How does this film exist? So I posted it. I did it with a friend on a green screen in school, and I'm pointing to different... I was going to Photoshop my teacher's face in, but I got too lazy, so now it's kind of weird in the video, I'm pointing around and there's nothing. Well, here are the statistical rap stylings of Lil Timmy Tim. Great work, Lil Timmy Tim!