Topics: Doja Cat, Timothée Chalamet, Social Media, TikTok, Celebrity, TV And Film, Entertainment
Doja Cat said she criticised Timothée Chalamet online because she wanted to be part of 'something bigger’ amid his viral ballet and opera comments.
The Marty Supreme actor, 30, sparked vitriol while expressing his thoughts on cinema preservation and the state of the film industry with Matthew McConaughey.
“I admire people - and I’ve done it myself - who go on a talk show and say ‘Hey, we’ve got to keep movie theatres alive, we’ve got to keep this genre alive’,” he said at the University of Texas talk.
“And another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, they’re going to go and see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it.”
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Chalamet continued: "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’.”
"All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”
The likes of three-time Tony Award winner Nathan Lane, ballet icon Misty Copeland, and Freaky Friday's Jamie Lee Curtis have all hit out at the Wonka actor, with the former calling him a ‘schmuck’.
“Hey, by the way, opera is 400 years old, ballet is 500 years old,” chimed in American rapper Doja Cat in a now-deleted TikTok post.
“Somebody named Tim-oh-tay Cha-lam-et had the nerve — big guy, by the way — had the nerve to say, on-camera, that nobody cares about it…
“You show up in a nice outfit. You sit the f**k down and shut the f**k up. That’s the usual etiquette around those things. Maybe learn something from that.”
However, the Grammy winner, 30, has since walked back on her statement, admitting her outrage was mainly ‘virtue signalling’.
“I am going to come out and say that I know nothing about opera. I know nothing about ballet. I’ve never been to a ballet. I’ve never seen an opera,” she admitted in another social media video.
“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.”
The ‘Paint the Town Red’ favourite said that after watching several other videos on the controversy, she realised she perhaps wasn’t the best person to speak out in favour of the arts.
“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 f**k with me,” Doja Cat confessed.
“And it’s easy. It’s a modern way to garner clicks, likes, approval and all kinds of things like that from people. And so I did that yesterday, and I didn’t really think about why I was doing it.”
The star claimed that her now-deleted video was the ‘perfect material for [her] to seem sincere’ and that she ‘just wanted a hug’.
“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.”
She concluded by saying: “It just kind of furthers the fact that sometimes I think s**t and then I’m like, never mind. So never mind.”
Chalamet, who is in the running to take home the Best Actor award at the Oscars later this month, has yet to break his silence on the backlash.
