Timothée Chalamet alert for all the Timmy C fans out there. “Dune: Part Two” is not coming out this fall as initially planned—it’s been kicked into 2024—but that doesn’t mean the planned GQ profile on him isn’t releasing as planned. He is on their cover this month, release dates be damned, they had an issue to get out, and while Warner Bros. surely must have wanted the press around March 15, 2024, the show must go on.
The profile is littered with little nuggets—that he’s been researching his role as Bob Dylan in the forthcoming James Mangold film, “A Complete Unknown,” for several years now, and that his obsession with “Nomadland,” led him to do the vaguely similar “Bones and All” (it’s about outsiders on the fringes too), for a few examples.
But if you thought Chalamet’s taste was all arthouse, not so. He’s a huge massive fan of “Top Gun: Maverick” and has literally seen it more than half a dozen times.
According to GQ, Chalamet saw the film in the fall and summer of 2022 eight times while shooting “Dune Part Two.”
“’Top Gun’ was just hugely inspiring to me last summer when we were making ‘Dune,’” he told the magazine. “Some of the crew were kind of scoffing at going, but I just thought it was one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.”
Chalamet also shared that Cruise gave him very Tom-Cruise-like advice, which was basically to seize the day on steroids as one would expect from Tom Cruise.
“After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email,” Chalamet said.
According to GQ, it included a rolodex of experts he might need for stunt training. A motorcycle coach. A helicopter coach. “He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So, it’s up to you. The email was really like a war cry.”
I suppose if you are sickly rich, you can basically hire all the experts to make you an expert in everything, but one supposes that speaks to Cruise’s uber commitment to everything he does. Not everyone is built like Cruise, and it remains to be seen if Chalamet ever does true-blue action—“Dune,” so far, is more like arthouse sci-fi; hey, at least he has that rolodex filed away for a rainy day. Glean more insights for the profile over at GQ.
