Timothée Chalamet’s recent comments about opera and ballet have garnered all manner of backlash and praise, and have naturally been a divisive source of cultural discourse. But as it turns out, Chalamet’s controversial words were a major sales boost, according to the head of the Royal Ballet and Opera in London.
Earlier this year, the Dune, Wonka, and Marty Supreme star ignited a debate heard around the world when he made comments about less-supported artforms while discussing cinematic preservation with fellow Interstellar actor Matthew McConaughey, at a talk at the University of Texas.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore,'” Chalamet said at the event back in February. “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”
“All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there”, he quickly added.
“The public reaction was just fantastic,” Alex Beard told The Times in a recent interview. “I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet.”
He continued: “We simply said, ‘Take a look at what we’re doing, mate.’ For instance, the fact that the largest portion of our audience by age is 20 to 30-year-olds. And you know what? Our post got two-and-a-half million engagements and half a million shares, just on Instagram. And our ticket sales got an immediate boost. So cheers, Timmy!”
But the RBO isn’t the only arts institution that has seen benefits come from Chalamet’s words. The Seattle Opera made a marketing campaign out of the quotes and even included a discount code — TIMOTHEE, of course — for certain showings. And in their social push, they called out to him directly by encouraging him to use the code and experience the artform he seemingly bashed, “Timmy, you’re welcome to use it too,” they wrote in their early March post.
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
