Timothée Chalamet committed hard to playing Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” the biopic for which he’s earning Oscar buzz for his performance as the legendary singer-songwriter. There are rumors that he stayed in character at all times and insisted that people call him “Bob” on set.
Chalamet addressed the rumors in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying that he didn’t always stay in character or insist on being addressed as “Bob,” but he would answer to it.
“It’s the furthest I’ve stretched myself,” Chalamet explained. “And it became so biblical to me in terms of this man’s life and his work that I felt if I let my focus err for a second, that I’d be self-loathing about it for years to come. I had three months to play Bob Dylan and the rest of my life I don’t get to be about that, so why not give it my all?”
Director James Mangold, who was also part of the interview, chimed in to say that judgmental questions about Chalamet’s process “piss him off.”
“The whole, ‘Did everyone have to call you Bob?’ Because it’s not obsessive,” he said. “If I were managing a baseball team, and I had a pitcher and we were in the f–king World Series, do I want him f–king walking down a hallway with a hundred people going, ‘Orel!’ No, I want him f–king focused. I want him thinking about his fastball. I want him thinking about his job. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re not here to sign autographs. We’re not here to entertain. We’re here to make a f–king movie about a character and the sh—ton of judgment going to be leveled on that young man’s shoulders. Any level of focus that he’s asking of himself, to me, should be honored and not called obsessive. It’s called doing your f–king job. That’s just my two cents on that.”
Elle Fanning, who plays Dylan’s (fictionalized) girlfriend Sylvie Russo, added that first assistant directors, who wrangle the actors on set, call actors by the character name on the call sheet. So it’s very normal that he would be called “Bob.”
“They do typically call you your character,” Chalamet confirmed. “But all that stuff about in-character Method work, that’s really not how I pushed this. There’s stuff you pointedly avoid, like cellphone use or things that are nakedly contemporary that could throw you. But [Method] wasn’t my MO at all. I realized how funny it was when Elle pulled me aside and said, ‘They told me I have a rehearsal with Bob. I got so excited. I thought Bob Dylan was coming, and it’s Timmy.’”
In a previous interview with Rolling Stone, Edward Norton, who plays folk singer Pete Seeger in the film, said that Chalamet was “relentless” in his dedication to the role. “No visitors, no friends, no reps, no nothing. ‘Nobody comes around us while we’re doing this,’” Norton said. “We’re trying to do the best we can with something that’s so totemic and sacrosanct to many people. And I agreed totally — it was like, we cannot have a f–king audience for this. We’ve got to believe to the greatest degree we can. And he was right to be that protective.” And Monica Barbaro, who plays folk singer Joan Baez, said that when Chalamet got too deep into conversation as himself, his Bob Dylan accent would start to slip, so he often kept to himself to maintain focus.
“A Complete Unknown” is now playing in select theaters and goes wide on Christmas Day.
