Interior: Georgia World Congress Center-Building B. We open on a rowdy crowd of Georgia fans donned in red and black. Clever sign postings dot the crowd and the usual crew of hosts preview Saturday’s slate of championship games. One sign in the crowd sticks out from the rest. “I am only here for Timothee Chalamet,” it reads. Well, so am I.
It’s a bizarre scene. Two things that have never shared a sentence together before today are forced to coexist: Timothee Chalamet and College Football. Clad in a ludicrously pink puffer, Chalamet presents as the living embodiment of our left leaning youth. The patron saint of Generation Z, if you will. He’s an online, art school, NYU grad who loves 2010s hip hop and has an embarrassingly large digital footprint. And yet here he sits, shoulder to shoulder with ESPN talking heads espousing gambling lines and rallying thousands of state school students and alumni, the past and future insurance salespeople of America.
Nothing about this sounds, looks or feels right. The broadcast is cueing his appearance with images of him dressed like Mr. Tumnus on the red carpet and donning galaxy embroidered Louis Vuitton hoodies, hand crafted by Virgil Abloh with perfectly groomed dark hair just lifted off of his shoulders. Chalamet has likely spent more time on his hair in one MET gala glam sesh than Kirby Smart has in his entire life. So nothing about this works, it is absolutely incredulous on the surface. Yet, it is must-watch TV.
At first I likened this experience to seeing your teacher at the supermarket. It invokes the sensation of seeing someone out of place somewhere they should never be. But after sitting, on the edge of my seat, through Chalamet’s six manicured picks I realized it is something else entirely. This is more like those classic viral videos of a seemingly nerdy, white kid executing a scheduled series of expert dance moves in front of a mob of their unsuspecting peers. Chalamet shouldn’t get to know ball, he’s an art school actor with credits on TWO Luca Guadanigno movies! And yet he does, much to the surprise and chagrin of his cohosts on the ESPN payroll.
Chalamet’s first pick spurs Desmond Howard to comment on how “great” of an actor Chalamet is. He is digging into the facade this New Yorker has so expertly donned for this appearance. But even if Chalamet’s picks feel inauthentic, as if his agent's nephew made them last night, it doesn’t really matter. His presence and physicality, what makes him so great onscreen, draws you into every goofy turn of phrase he spews about the Ohio University Bobcats’ front seven.
Oftentimes celebrity guests take a seat on the Gameday desk and try oh so hard to be themselves. Audiences love authenticity! That is what many a West Hollywood PR firm will tell you. But inside the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, Chalamet is doing what all actors do, he’s playing the part. His two sentence spiels and cherry picked stats mirror those of his deskmates. What he says about each matchup is virtually indistinguishable from the nuggets of wisdom coming from Heisman winner Desmond Howard and seven time national champion Nick Saban. You can feel the hosts simmering in their business formal as this 28 year old, who should be barred from football fields for his own personal safety, mimics their own usual platitudes with expert impression. As Chalamet makes his last pick for the Texas Longhorns, he smartly references Matthew McConaughey, a peer and costar who has made loving college sports the focal point of the last arc of his career. At this point, Chalamet is playing the hits. While at the mercy of this hostile crowd he throws up a hook 'em horns hand sign and bids farewell to the audience. As quickly as he came he slinks off our small screens to take his rightful place on the big one as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.”
In a career lacking any major missteps it is easy to paint Chalamet as a preordained star whose path was laid out for him to precisely follow. But that ignores many of his ambitious choices along the way. After blossoming in Call Me By Your Name he would go on to play Lauri in Little Women and Paul Atreides in Dune, upon casting he was widely panned by fans of the original material. Much like his appearance on College Gameday drew skepticism and ire upon its announcement. But Chalamet is such a magnetic and commanding celebrity that these would-be mistakes become genius career moves in real time. What should be career killers are star-making performances for Chalamet. This is the same actor who fornicated with a peach on screen in an Oscar nominated performance and then four years later drew $634 million dollars worth of people to see “Wonka.”
When they announced that Chalamet would be joining College Gameday it seemed like a hilarious parody and an inevitable train wreck. Then, hot pink jacket and all, he slips into the role as comfortable as ever and delivers exactly what audiences tune in for every Saturday. While the rest of the desk picked Miami of Ohio to win the MAC Championship game, Chalamet went against the grain, selecting University of Ohio to win instead. As I write this his Ohio Bobcats are leading 28-3. Will this kid ever be wrong?