Doja Cat has come to the defense of ballet and opera. The Grammy-winning artist took a shot at Timothée Chalamet in a since-deleted TikTok on Sunday (March 8), following the Marty Supreme actor’s polarizing comments in February about both performance art disciplines.
Rocking a towel outside of the shower, Doja clapped at Chalamet in the viral clip while appearing to butcher his name with her pronunciation on purpose.
“Hey, by the way, opera is 400 years old, ballet is 500 years old. Somebody named Tim-ohtay Chalamet had the nerve — big guy, by the way — had the nerve to say, on camera, that nobody cares about it,” Doja began.
Essentially, Doja wants to see Chalamet put some respect on ballet and opera after he said “no one cares” about either right now.
“I’m sure you can walk into an opera theater right now, seats will be filled out and nobody’s saying a word as the performance is going because everybody has that much respect for it,” she continued. “There is an etiquette around opera. There is etiquette around ballet. It is amazing. It’s an amazing theater medium. It’s f–king beautiful and people go there every day to the dance studio.”
Chalamet made the controversial comments during a Variety and CNN town hall panel with Matthew McConaughey in February.
“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,” he said, which drew applause in the venue and criticism on social media. “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
Doja explained that although some performance art industries may be currently struggling, it doesn’t mean that a ton of people don’t care about it. “It doesn’t matter if the industry is having a tough time at any time, which a lot of industries have a tough time,” she said. “Your industry has a tough time, my industry has a tough time. Doesn’t mean people don’t care about it. People care. The dancers care, the singers care, the audience cares.”
Doja concluded: “There’s still an audience. People give a f–k. 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.”
Billboard has reached out to Chalamet for comment.
Various opera houses have turned Chalamet’s criticism into a positive by using his name for ticketing promo codes and extending personal invites to the actor to come check out a show.
Saturday Night Live even took a shot at the actor during the Weekend Update segment. Quipped Colin Jost: “Chalamet made the comment on a press tour for his movie about … ping-pong.”
