Let This Be the Last Timothée Chalamet Ballet Take

It’s been three weeks since Timothée Chalamet told Matthew McConaughey he didn’t want movies to go the way of opera and ballet — two art forms that, according to Chalamet, “no one cares” about — and since then, we have seen a seemingly endless stream of commentary from anyone who’s ever seen Center Stage. The ballerinas were mad, the sopranos were mad, and Misty Copeland seemed to regret wearing a Marty Supreme windbreaker. Now, at least one person is walking back their outrage: Doja Cat, who weighed in via TikTok earlier this week to remind Chalamet that the art forms are hundreds of years old and “there’s still an audience” for both, is now saying her statement was “virtue signaling.”

“I’ve never been to a ballet. I’ve never seen an opera,” Doja explained in a follow-up video. (She also took down her first video shortly after posting it.) “I took it upon myself yesterday to kind of give it to the man because there is a culture based around outrage and things like that and people want to feel like they’re part of something. It’s a need to connect, whether good or bad.”

“What I was doing yesterday was virtue signaling because I wanted to connect and I knew that Timothée’s goof up was something that I could leverage in order for people to connect with me and fuck with me,” she continued, adding that she “didn’t really think about why” she was making the video in the first place.

Doja reiterated that she knows nothing about ballet or opera (despite dancing in her childhood and attending a performing-arts high school) and that what she was really looking for was to feel included. “I think I just wanted a hug,” she said. “I wanted to feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to be pat on the back the way everybody else is patting each other on the back in the comments sections. And I wanted to look like a hero, and that’s what happened. And when I got it, I didn’t like it so much.”

Now that we have the full context of Doja’s statement, it’s time to wrap this whole thing up. We cannot spend any more time debating whether or not the general public cares about ballet and opera. It doesn’t seem to have affected Chalamet at all — he hasn’t spoken about the backlash to his comments, and, while everyone on this side of the world was getting worked up over his poor phrasing, he’s been having an amazing time in Asia promoting Marty Supreme. Why spend any time going through drafts of a Notes-app apology when you could be cutting up tofu with a ping-pong paddle and playing wacky games on Japanese TV?

Blessedly, this whole thing will probably be over after this Sunday’s Oscars, which will mark the end of Chalamet’s six-month press blitz. If anything, this saga is a great reminder that Oscars season does not have to be this long. If the ceremony had happened in early February, we probably would never have learned what Chalamet thinks about opera and ballet in the first place. Doesn’t that sound nice?