Timothée Chalamet has made no secret about his aspirations for greatness within the world of acting, but as the three-time Best Actor Oscar nominee’s star continues to rise, he’s also getting a lesson in how much weight his words carry. The actor is seen as pretentious by some, and he faced a lot of backlash in March for saying “no one cares about” the opera or ballet anymore. Now Chalamet’s mother has spoken out about his relationship to the ballet, adding another wrinkle to all the controversy.
When Timothée Chalamet makes comments about performing arts — and ballet specifically — he’s speaking about a topic that’s very close to his family. In fact, his mom, Nicole Flender, and sister, Pauline Chalamet, were professionally trained ballerinas, unlike Timothée, who apparently marched to the beat of a very different drum. People caught up with Flender at the American Ballet Theatre’s 2026 Spring Gala, where she discussed ballet’s importance in her life:
Well, I was a ballet dancer. I trained at the School of American Ballet. Timmy didn’t take ballet classes. My daughter did. She was at SAB also, Pauline. Timmy did his own dancing. You know, he was a rap artist at a high school, so he did his own thing.
In addition to Timothée Chalamet’s mom and sister training at the School of American Ballet, his grandmother Enid Flender was also classically trained, dancing with the New York City Ballet. However deeply that genre of dance runs in his family, the actor did not practice it himself.
He was, however, still dancing, and those videos from his high school days may have even helped to land him the titular role in Wonka.
The original comments that landed Timothée Chalamet in hot water were from a CNN & Variety Town Hall Event featuring him and Matthew McConaughey. The Dune actor spoke about keeping movie theaters alive for coming generations, making his point by saying, in part:
I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this anymore’ — all respect to the ballet and opera people out there.
He immediately seemed to realize what he’d done, acknowledging that people weren’t going to like him taking “shots for no reason.” He was right, too, as the Royal Ballet and Opera immediately responded with an invitation to attend a show and reconsider his comments. They weren’t the only ones, either, as real-life ballerinas and opera singers added their two cents, and The View co-hosts called Chalamet “vapid” and “shallow.”
It’s interesting to hear Nicole Flender’s take on the situation, with ballet clearly continuing to be an important part of her life, and it gives a lot of context to her son’s comments, knowing not only how big ballet is in Timothée Chalamet’s family but that it was never something that he participated in.
If you want to see what he is doing these days, however, check out Wonka (and see a bit of his dance moves) or his most recent movie, Marty Supreme, which both can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription.
