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Never let it be said that Timothée Chalamet doesn’t do his homework. In his first extensive interview about his role as Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown, the Willy Wonka star told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that he learned how to play 13 classic Dylan songs for the movie, in addition to working with a harmonica coach for five years to nail the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s signature style.
In addition to tapping a movement coach to help him embody the enigmatic icon’s physical stance, Chalemet also told Lowe that he took a “spirit-gathering” road trip mimicking the Minnesota native’s early years as a budding folk singer, starting off in Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, MN, before traveling to neighboring Duluth, then on to Chicago and Madison, WI.
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“It was the best experience I’ve had as an actor or the most rewarding experience I’ve had doesn’t really necessarily translate to the effect of it, not only on people, but maybe in the finished product because I’ve also had more challenging experiences that come out great,” Chalamet said of the long journey to bring the singer to life on screen. “I’m happy it took five, six years because I am now deep in that Church of Bob. I feel like that’s my mission is the next three months, until the movie comes out, I feel like I’m in the Church of Bob, I’m a humble disciple, and I feel like I got this opportunity to kind of be a bridge to this music or this period, this time period.”
Despite his deep-dive, Chalamet said he wasn’t trying to do an imitation of the singer’s voice, explaining, “This is interpretive. This is not definitive. This is not fact. This is not how it happened. This is a fable.” In fact, he said none of his fellow actors were there to perform impersonations.
“This is about not only myself interpreting Bob, but Edward Norton interpreting Pete Seeger, Monica [Barbaro] interpreting Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook interpreting Johnny Cash in this moment in the ’60s where American culture was a kaleidoscope and Greenwich Village was a kaleidoscope,” he said. “The way culture still is now too, but without being a history teacher, that was the beginning, personalized music, stuff with intention, stuff with poetry, it all started there in the movie.”
The journey was, as expected, arduous, given Dylan’s unique vocal style and quixotic public persona. Though he said he didn’t play guitar on the pre-records of the songs, Chalamet said he worried the guitar on the songs was too “friendly,” given that in the early 1960s Dylan was playing an instrument was “basically falling apart.” Similarly, the actor said he found that his voice had a baritone range, but that too sounded too “clean” too him.
“I was doing vocal warmups with Eric Vetro, who was this vocal coach who helped me on Wonka and helped me sing ‘Grand’ on Wonka. And then, here, I would listen to it back and I’m like, ‘Man, this sounds too clean,’” he said, calling the role the “most dignified work” he’s ever done.
In a nod to Dylan’s often unpredictable nature, Chalamet recalled that the singer’s manager secretly came to set one day and after watching the actor he praised him for capturing the “spirit” of his client. In fact, the text he got was so effusive and positive, that Chalamet said he and Norton were “jumping up and down and went, ‘man, Bob’s manager loves it’ and then we were like, ‘oh no, the real Bob’s such a contrarian that Jeff’s gonna go to him and say this movie looks good and then Bob’s gonna say well, it must be a piece of s–t.’”
Now that he’s been fully immersed in the “Church of Bob,” Chalamet said he feels like he can be a “bridge” to bring the the voice of a generation to a whole new generation. In a pair of trailers to date, Chalamet appears to fully transform his voice and physical manner to tell the story of Dylan’s early 1960s rise to fame and the controversial moment he switched to electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
A Complete Unknown opens in theaters on Dec. 25.
Watch the full interview below.
John Mayer and director McG (Family Switch) have teamed up to buy one of Hollywood’s most historic studio lots. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a spokesperson for guitarist/singer Mayer confirmed that the pair are “under contract to buy Henson Studios.” THR reported that the approximately $60M bid was a “dramatic reversal” for the famed property […]
Everyone gets a little nervous meeting super famous people, even if they’re equally famous. Oscar-nominated actress Saoirse Ronan stopped by The Tonight Show on Thursday (Nov. 7) and revealed that when she finally met her celebrity doppelgänger this summer she was totally star-struck. Fallon held up a picture of a post in which someone online […]
Queens recognize queens. Pamela Anderson had nothing but love for Beyoncé‘s Halloween tribute to her Barb Wire character. On Tuesday (Nov. 5), Bey dropped the first music video from her Cowboy Carter era with “Bodyguard,” in which the singer channeled a trio of Anderson’s most iconic looks for what she dubbed “Beylloween” in an Instagram […]
Dick Van Dyke reached back 60 years on Monday (Nov. 4) to a time when the United States was riven by racial animus and division to remind voters that such emotions are not, and should not, be the norm. The 98-year-old Hollywood legend and Mary Poppins star posted a black-and-white video on his socials endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris a day before voters took to the polls to weigh in on the neck-and-neck race between the sitting Democrat Vice President and former command-in-chief Donald Trump.
“Fifty years ago – May 31, 1964 — I was on the podium with Dr. Martin Luther King” he said of the Religious Witness for Human Dignity event held by the late civil rights leader in front of 60,000 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. “I was there to read a message written by Rod Serling, the guy who wrote The Twilight Zone. I got it out the other day, and I think it means as much today, if not more, than it did then. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to read it,” Van Dyke said.
The beloved actor and singer then read a selection from Serling’s note, which was entitled “A Most Non-Political Speech,” reprising his recitation at the King event more than half a century ago. “Hatred is not the norm. Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating, none of those are the transcendent facet of the human personality. They’re diseases,” Van Dyke said. “They are the cancers of the soul. They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have been breeding humanity for years. And because they have been and because they are, is it necessary that they shall be? I think not.”
With the trademark sparkle in his eye and warmth in his voice, Van Dyke continued. “If there’s one voice left to say ‘welcome’ to a stranger, if there’s one hand outstretched to say ‘enter and share,’ if there’s one mind remaining to think a thought of warmth and friendship, then there’s a future in which we’ll find more than one hand, more than one voice and more than one mind dedicated to the cause of man’s equality. Wishful? Hopeful? Unassured? Problematical and not to be guaranteed, that’s all true.”
He added, “But again, on this spring evening of 1964, a little of man’s awareness has shown itself. A little of his essential decency, his basic goodness, his preeminent dignity, has been made a matter of record. There will be moments of violence and expressions of hatred and an ugly re-echo of intolerance, but these are the clinging vestiges of a decayed past, not the harbingers of the better, cleaner future.”
The powerful message from Van Dyke came as both Trump and Harris were delivering their final messages to supporters on Monday night (Nov. 4), both in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Harris was joined in Philadelphia by a galaxy of A-list stars — including Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin and The Roots — during an address where she once again vowed to fight for the future of all Americans.
“We love our country. And when you love something, you fight for it,” Harris said in an address just before midnight. “I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism, of our expression of our love for our country, to then fight for its ideals and to fight to realize the promise of America… America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where see our fellow Americans not as an enemy, but as a neighbor.”
Also speaking in Pennsylvania, Trump — who would be the oldest person ever elected president at 78 — stuck to his foreboding, grievance-filled stump speech, vowing to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in an effort at the mass deportation of illegal migrants he has promised on day one of his potential second administration. He also once again referred to Harris as a “radical left Marxist” and promised to “get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” in the closing argument of a campaign in which he has questioned Harris’ racial identity and sought to lure Latino voters to his side despite recently featuring a comedian at his New York rally who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Referring to the U.S. as an “occupied country” on Monday, Trump also again falsely claimed that “a lot of bad things” happened in the 2020 election he lost to President Biden.
In his recitation, Van Dyke — who did not mention either candidate, but did encourage his fans to vote and included hashtags for Harris — added a most poignant bit from Serling. “To those who tell us that the inequality of the human animal is the necessary evil, we must respond by simply saying that first, it is evil, but not necessary. We prove it, sitting here tonight, in 1964. We prove it by affirming our faith. We prove it by having faith in our affirmations,” he said.
The reading ended with a quote from 19th century abolitionist and U.S. House Rep. Horace Mann, “‘Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.’ I’d like to paraphrase that tonight. ‘Let us be ashamed to live without that victory,’” Van Dyke said, lamenting that “a lot” has happened since then, but perhaps not as much as MLK dreamed of. “But it’s a start,” Van Dyke smiled.
Van Dyke joins a long roster of major stars who’ve supported Harris’ campaign, a list that includes: Taylor Swift, Cardi B, Eminem, Scarlett Johansson, LeBron James, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Bad Bunny, Harrison Ford, Cher, Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, Usher, Olivia Rodrigo, Madonna, Kesha, Billie Eilish, Bruce Springsteen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Charli XCX, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many more.
Pollsters have repeatedly claimed that Trump and Harris are in a neck-and-neck race, with most predicting that results will likely not be finalized when voting ends on Tuesday night (Nov. 5). If you are not sure where your polling place is, click here to find out.
Watch Van Dyke read Serling’s message below.
Ariana Grande says she absolutely had to “earn” the right to play Glinda in the upcoming two-part big screen adaptation of Wicked. Speaking to Sentimental Men podcast hosts Quincy Born and Kevin Bianchi this week, Grande said she’s “always been a Wizard of Oz person,” but despite her global pop fame — including nine No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits — and deep knowledge and love for the original 1939 Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz and the 2003 Tony-winning Broadway production of Wicked, it was not a given that she’d land the gig in director Jon M. Chu’s fantastical re-imagining.
“People sometimes say to me, ‘you had to audition?’ Of course, are you out of your gourd?,” she said about earning the right to step into the beloved role opposite Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba. “It’s Wicked! And it requires a totally different skill set than people know me for and have ever seen me do anything like,” she explained. “It’s Wicked! That’s the most respectful thing! It has to be earned… period!”
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If anything, Grande said her pop stardom could have worked against her in certain ways. “When you have this characterized persona that’s out there and people know you very well as this one thing, is this person going to be able to erase that and disappear into a character?,” she said, stressing that nothing about her playing Glinda is about herself, but only about inhabiting the beloved character.
During the pod recording where the singer apologized several times for her dog Myron’s incessant barking, Grande told the hosts that she has often turned to the Broadway Wicked original cast album for comfort and a “safe space” if she is nervous or needs to warm up her voice.
Grande also recalled that she first saw Wicked on Broadway when she was just 10, feeling “very, very, very fortunate” to see the original cast at a time when it was the show that “everyone was talking about.” In addition to repeatedly seeing the show on the Great White Way, after bidding way too much in a Broadway Cares Equity Fight AIDS auction for a backstage tour, the budding star was gifted a “little wand” and “magical body wash” by star Kristin Chenoweth.
How obsessed was she? At one point Grande erased every single song on her iPod with the exception of the Wicked soundtrack, further proof that this dream gig might have been in the stars all along. And, when the first murmurings about the film version reached her desk before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the singer said she told her team that she was willing to immediately pull the plug on her 2019 Sweetener world tour so she could go home and start on voice and acting lessons.
“‘I’m gonna turn this s–t out,’” Grande said she told her team more than a year before her August 2021 audition. “‘This is all I want. It’s done.’” Though they appreciated her enthusiasm, Grande said her management politely said no way to cancelling the tour at a time when the singer thought she might be brought in to read for both lead roles.
She knew, however, that Glinda was the part she was destined to inhabit. When Chenoweth gave her the thumbs up, Ariana said she lost it. “We had talked about it for years and years and years, but me finally confessing to her that I wanted to go in for Glinda was like a whole different thing,” Grande said about asking Chenoweth for guidance on how to really nail the part and make it her own without resorting to an impersonation.
“I said, ‘Hey, I think they’re doing this now, and I think that I wanna go for Glinda,’ and she went into the bathroom and closed the door and started crying,” Grande said beginning to tear up herself at the memory. “It was the sweetest thing in the world. Oh my god, it makes me emotional. It was so cute. She was just like, ‘I was hoping this would happen. I love you, and I trust you with it, baby girl.’ She was like, ‘Just do your thing. Just do your thing. You are so funny and you have great instincts and no one knows that.”
The first part of the movie that also co-stars Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Bowen Yang, Jonathan Bailey and Marissa Bode, opens in theaters on Nov. 22.
Watch Grande talk Wicked below.
Now that she’s had a few weeks to think it over, Cynthia Erivo says she kind of wishes she’d reached out to a few friends before posting her heated reaction to some viral fan edits of the poster for Wicked. The singer/actress made it very clear earlier this month that she was not cool with […]
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Actor David Harris, who famously portrayed Cochise in the cult classic film The Warriors, has passed away. He was 75.
According to the New York Times, Harris died in his home in New York City after a battle with cancer, per his daughter Davina Harris.
Harris appeared in films like A Soldier’s Story and Fatal Beauty, and television shows including NYPD Blue, In The Heat of the Night and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But it was no doubt The Warriors, released in 1979, that still got him recognized wherever he went.
In The Warriors, a Hip-Hop movie through and through for those that know, the eponymously named gang has to make it all the way back to Coney Island after a big gang meeting in The Bronx goes left when Cyrus—who hoped to unite all the gangs—gets shot and killed after his epic “Can you dig it?!” speech. Keep in mind , there are no cell phones or Ubers, just NYC’s rapid transit and every other gang in the city out to stop them. It was Cochise who proved to be one of the more thorough members of the crew, showing deference to war chief Swan, finding time to party with girls on the way home and willingly throwing hands when it became necessary.
“I was the last Warrior cast,” Harris told The Five Count podcast during an interview. “Walter Hill saw like, I don’t, 300 or 400 actors for Cochise in The Warriors in New York, but he could find Cochise. I was in Minneapolis doing a play and I got back to New York and Walter was still trying to find Cochise. My agent said, Hey man there’s this movie in the city and there’s a part that they’re having a problem casting… I walk into the room, I had two scenes to read for Walter but he took one look at me [and] said, Go down to wardrobe. He found his Cochise.”
Rest in powerful peace David Harris.
Pianos anchor both Abigail Barlow’s and Emily Bear’s Los Angeles apartments. Self-described “Barbie girl” Barlow, 25, has a shiny magenta lacquered Yamaha U1, as brightly hued as her hair and her bedazzled Stanley mug. The “old-ass” Steinway upright — a refurbished turn-of-the-century specimen purchased from “a random warehouse downtown” — belongs to 23-year-old Bear.
It would be tempting to assume that the two musicians are polar opposites, based on their instruments as well as their backstories. Barlow is a pop singer-songwriter who first dreamed of becoming “a musical theater actrice”; Bear was a wunderkind classical and jazz pianist, a Quincy Jones protegée who played for Beyoncé on the Renaissance tour and was intent on writing film/TV scores. And while both entered the industry in their teens, it wasn’t until a mutual friend introduced them in 2019 that they started writing songs together. Their creative partnership (and friendship) has been, as Barlow says, “just like alchemy,” ever since.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Barlow & Bear co-wrote The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album, inspired by the book series and hit Netflix drama, which became a viral sensation, racking up 60.3 million on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, and winning the duo the best musical theater album Grammy Award in 2022. (Netflix sued the pair that July for copyright infringement when it put on a live, for-profit performance of the album at the Kennedy Center; the suit was reportedly settled out of court a few months later.) But now, their collaboration is about to hit the mainstream. Barlow & Bear’s music for Moana 2, in theaters Nov. 27, will make them the youngest (and only all-women) songwriting duo to create a full soundtrack for a Disney animated film. Two of their songs — “Beyond,” a soaring showcase for star Auli’i Cravalho (Moana), and “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Maui) — will, Disney reveals, be submitted for Academy Award consideration.
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Like much of the musical theater-loving world, Walt Disney Music president Tom MacDougall first became aware of Barlow & Bear as a team through Bridgerton. (For Bear, it was also a full-circle moment: As an 8-year-old pianist, she had met MacDougall, who gifted her a Tangled score signed by storied composer Alan Menken that still hangs on her wall.) About three years ago, he met them for lunch to “sort of put it on our radar that he might have a project for us,” Barlow recalls. She and Bear didn’t expect much to come of it — but MacDougall was impressed by the storytelling in their Bridgerton music. “That spirit of deciding to musicalize this thing that wasn’t a musical gave me the confidence they could pull [a Disney film] off,” he says. “If they could conjure up the spirit to create songs where they didn’t exist, I had a good feeling that if we gave them moments to build songs around, they’d be able to deliver.”
Abigail Barlow (left) and Emily Bear
Maggie Shannon
A year later, in 2022, Barlow & Bear met with the creative team for Moana 2 — a sequel to the 2016 animated film about the titular young girl who sets out to save her Polynesian island — which was then planned as a Disney+ streaming series. “Both of us, weirdly, were going through similar struggles to what Moana faces in this new journey,” Bear explains. “It was easy to put ourselves in her shoes and understand that she’s just a young woman trying to find her place in the world, as are we.”
Around the middle of last year, Disney reenvisioned Moana 2 as a feature film — by which point Barlow & Bear were immersed in learning the ropes of composing for Disney, absorbing some imparted wisdom of their Moana composing predecessor, Lin-Manuel Miranda. “He gave me a stack of books about how to structurally craft a lyric not only to be storytelling-accurate, but to roll off the tongue, to fly off the page and into people’s minds and hearts,” Barlow says.
For her part, Bear dove into the treasure trove of foundational material from Moana by their soundtrack teammates, composers Opetaia Foa’i (a Samoan-born singer whose Polynesian music group, Te Vaka, performs on both Moana soundtracks) and Mark Mancina. “They recorded a huge library of logs and skins and vocal samples, so there were grooves that inspired entire songs,” Bear says. “Even if we started or wrote a song on our own, the root of it was still Opie.”
Though Barlow and Bear both admit that working on Moana 2 still feels surreal, they don’t have much time to soak it in: They’re booked and busy, in part because of that Grammy win. But both say the award’s significance to them was more symbolic. “We grew a lot as human beings through the whole [Bridgerton] process, and becoming like, ‘mature, professional girlie’ was something my soul desperately wanted and needed,” Barlow says. Bear agrees. “I’ve done a lot, but mostly as a kid, and for some reason that felt like it didn’t really count. I’ve been working so hard to outrun the ‘prodigy’ label,” she says. “[The Grammy] was really big for me because it was the first time people purely judged me based off music I did as an adult.”
Abigail Barlow (left) and Emily Bear
Maggie Shannon
Their post-Moana 2 slate as a duo includes the forthcoming biopic of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starring Jamie Bell and Margaret Qualley and their first produced stage musical, currently in development with a creative team attached. Bear (who is also an Emmy winner for her score for the PBS documentary Life) has scored two forthcoming films: Anderson .Paak’s feature debut, K-Pops, and Our Little Secret, a Netflix Christmas film starring Lindsay Lohan. Barlow, with a chuckle, says she may soon “release the album I wrote, like, a year-and-a-half ago.”
And then there’s the mystery “little musical idea” that first brought them together, a “very production-heavy” show “bringing you down the rabbit hole of what pop musical theater can be… which is very dear to us,” Barlow says with a knowing grin. It’s a reminder of the excitement they felt when they first met — and still feel in any session together. “We’re in love, musically,” Barlow says, “for real.”
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
SZA is super stressed out in the first trailer for her upcoming film debut in the buddy comedy One of Them Days. The R-rated movie co-starring Keke Palmer focuses on a super relatable problem: paying the rent. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to a description of […]