- The Royal Ballet and Opera boss has thanked Timothée Chalamet in a surprise statement for boosting ticket sales after his controversial remark about the arts.
- "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,'" the Dune actor recently stated, with his words prompting a major backlash.
- "Our ticket sales got an immediate boost," Alex Beard announced this week about the aftermath of Chalamet's words. "So cheers, Timmy!"
Timothée Chalamet has dominated the headlines in 2026, with the Marty Supreme star coming under fire for his controversial statement that "no one cares" about ballet and opera.
"I admire people, and I've done it myself, who go on a talk show and say, 'Hey, we've got to keep movie theaters alive, we've gotta keep this genre alive,'" Chalamet told his Interstellar co-star Matthew McConaughey during a CNN and Variety town hall in February.
"And another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they're going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it.
"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 continued.
"All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there," he added, noting: "I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason."
Chalamet's controversial words prompted a major backlash, with key figures and organisations from the arts speaking out.
"Every night at the Royal Opera House, thousands of people gather for ballet and opera. For the music. For the storytelling. For the sheer magic of live performance," the Royal Ballet and Opera posted to Instagram at the time.
"If you’d like to reconsider, Timothée Chalamet, our doors are open."
Now, Royal Ballet and Opera boss, Alex Beard, has opened up about the effect of Chalamet's statement. And according to him, it has prompted a "fantastic" response from the public, boosting ticket sales.
"I thought it important that we didn't issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet," Beard recalled of their official reaction.
"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," Beard continued. "So cheers, Timmy!"
Timothée Chálamet has not publicly responded to Beard's comments.
We will continue to update this story.
