When it comes to marketing his movies, no actor in Hollywood is working harder than Timothée Chalamet.
For his new movie “Marty Supreme,” which opens nationwide Christmas Day and is already playing in New York City and Los Angeles, Chalamet’s gone global — traveling to merch events and appearing on “The Tonight Show” with a squad of people wearing giant Ping-Pong balls as heads. This week, he even surprised the crowd at an NYC table-tennis invitational.
He promised on Friday to make “128 appearances” at pre-release screenings of the film. And there was the cringe-comedy Zoom call on social media in which he “fruitionized” his ideas — like painting the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower the movie’s signature “corroded orange, falling apart orange” color.
He’s been wearing that eye-popping hue to the film’s premieres, coordinating outfits with his mom, Nicole Flender, in New York City and girlfriend Kylie Jenner in Los Angeles.
Amid rumors that he’s been living out an Andy Kaufman-style stunt as a masked Liverpool rapper called EsDeeKid, on Friday Chalamet released a music video with the musician, rapping about “Marty Supreme” and Jenner: “It’s Timothée Chalamet chillin’/ Tryin’ to stack $100 million / Girl got a billion.” (Although, Variety points out, who knows if this EsDeeKid is real … or a stand-in.)
Now, sources told Page Six that the actor has been influenced by the example of Jenner’s family — who are all about building their personal brands.
“Timmy’s been ‘Kardashian-ized,” said one industry source who has worked with him.
It’s apparently working for him. “Marty Supreme,” in which he gives a critically lauded turn as frantic table-tennis player Marty Mauser, has racked up the fastest pre-sales in studio A24’s history, according to Deadline, and he’s already nominated for a Golden Globe.
The power player compared Chalamet’s gonzo movie-marketing techniques to the Kardashian family’s ethos of creating a strong personal brand.
“Both Timmy and Kylie are just into a different genre, the way they think about life and how they want to live,” the industry source said, noting, “he has pretty lofty goals.”
Indeed, Chalamet makes no bones about his ambition. He was nominated for an Academy Award for “Call Me by Your Name” in 2018 and again this year for “A Complete Unknown,” making him the youngest two-time Best Actor nominee since James Dean.
In accepting a SAG Award for best actor for the Dylan biopic earlier this year, Chalamet said that he is “really in pursuit of greatness” — a seemingly sincere comment that was met with online snark — and has name checked Michael Jordan alongside Day-Lewis and Viola Davis.
“All big actors get to be full of themselves, it’s par for the course,” said another Hollywood source who knows him. “He really cares about the craft for sure, he’s an actor with a capital A.
“But he’ll say ‘I don’t want to promote this movie using the old playbook and doing the same types of interviews … He’ll say ‘Let’s make it fun, let’s do it different way.’”
There’s also, the Hollywood source said, an unusual understanding of how to appeal to his very online audience: “His fans love him and he definitely knows how to speak to his fans and interact and it’s really important to him.
Despite recent rumblings that Jenner and Chalamet may have broken up, they were glued together at the LA premiere for “Marty Supreme” earlier this month — and Page Six is told that he’ll join the Kardashians at Kris Jenner’s legendary Christmas Eve bash at her home in Calabasas, California, the day before his film opens nationwide.
“They’re definitely still together, but it’s not like she needs to be at every promotional event [to prove it],” the industry source told Page Six of Jenner, who has been linked to Chalamet since the spring of 2023.
And Jenner will be by the bright young star’s side as he prepares for an inevitable Oscars run in the new year. He’s already nominated for Best Actor, Musical or Comedy, at January’s Golden Globes.
Despite his readiness to hit the spotlight for the sake of his work, his relationship with Jenner is conducted mainly under the radar — and that’s how they both like it.
“Timmy’s pretty quiet about Kylie,” said the industry source. “But he’s pretty private as a person.”
Although Kylie will likely join her man at the Golden Globes on January 11, “They both want to be their own person, for sure,” said the industry source. “They’ll do some promo, but for the rest they want to keep things between them.”
By keeping their romance pretty quiet, Chalamet and Jenner have outsmarted her sisters — whose various boyfriends and husbands have struggled with what’s been called the “Kardashian curse.”
“It’s definitely a smarter play than how Kylie’s other sisters have handled their own love lives in the public eye,” said the Hollywood source.
Jenner, 28, went incognito when she joined Chalamet — who turns 30 on December 27 — at a secret screening of “Marty” at the New York Film Festival back in October.
The mom-of-two was spotted backstage with Chalamet and Josh Safdie, who wrote and directed the film, before the lovebirds celebrated with an afterparty at NYC’s Waverly Inn, where they were joined by friends in a booth for most of the night, looking “warmly affectionate and happy,” according to an onlooker.
The couple were not publicly seen together after that until July, when they were spotted holding hands during a weekend in Saint-Tropez (Chalamet, whose father is French, speaks the language fluently) and then in August at a coffee shop in Budapest, where he was filming “Dune: Part Three.”
The fact that they’re rarely seen together has the effect of adding public intrigue — and, no surprise, they have figured out how to make those appearances memorable. Experts say the attention-getting idea for matching outfits likely came from Chalamet.
“He is at the forefront of Hollywood men having more fun…wearing cool s–t,” said noted fashion writer Amy Odell, who penned the recent biography on Chalamet’s “Marty” co-star Gwyneth Paltrow.
In this respect, he seems to have taken a leaf out of the Kardashian playbook. “That family is enmeshed in fashion [in a way that drives people to] talk about them. I keep thinking they are going to fade and they just don’t,” said Odell.
“It’s hard to get people to go to the movies,” she added, pointing out that Chalamet has been working tirelessly to promote “Marty” with his own unique sense of style, just as he did with last year’s PR campaign for “A Complete Unknown.”
Although Chalamet naturally leans toward street style and baggy sweats, he’s been working with his high-fashion pal Haider Ackermann, who now designs for Tom Ford.
Ackermann notoriously put Chalamet in a backless red halter top at the “Bones & All” premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival — the kind of thing that divided audiences but had everyone talking.
So has his onscreen “Marty” romance with Paltrow, who is 23 years older and was coaxed out of her Goop-imposed retirement to play his lover, fading movie star Kay Stone, said Odell.
“I think it’s great for him,” she said. “She’s an Oscar-winning actress and he wants to be an Oscar-winning actor. And just like Gwyneth, Timothée knows how to get his media moments.”
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