Timothée Chalamet on love, loss and isolation in Bones and All: the Dune star opens up about his grandmother’s death during the pandemic, and why he wants to play the disenfranchised on screen

Jan 3 , 2023

Timothée Chalamet on the red carpet at the 2022 Oscars in March. Photo: Reuters

Chalamet is already hitting superstar heights after his roles in Call Me By Your Name and Dune alongside Zendaya – now he plays a disaffected cannibal in Bones and All

Losing his grandmother during the pandemic left Chalamet feeling isolated – something he says he’s still struggling with – but believes it helped him play the difficult role

Timothée Chalamet is one of the most talented actors in Hollywood – of any age. His leading role in Dune, the critically acclaimed 2021 sci-fi film that went on to earn more than US$400 million at the box office, solidified his status as a highly bankable A-list star with a very lucrative future ahead. And he’s only 27 years old.

Armie Hammer (right) with Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name (2017). Photo: Handout

Chalamet’s most recent offering is Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino, the same Italian director who helped him secure his first Oscar nomination after casting him in the aching, artsy gay romance Call Me By Your Name.

Taylor Russell as Maren and Timothée Chalamet as Lee in a still from Bones and All. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Bones and All takes Chalamet on a very different journey that is part drama, part romance and part horror. He plays Lee, a disaffected hipster drifter who finds solace in the company of 18-year-old Maren (rising actress Taylor Russell), despairing of her life in a trailer park. Together, they embark on a journey across America as a couple of lost souls who feed their existential hunger as vampire-like cannibals. Yes, cannibals.

Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, promoting Bones and All at the 79th Venice Film Festival in September. Photo: Invision/AP

“To be young now is to be intensely judged … it’s tough to be alive now,” mused Chalamet while promoting the film at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September. “It was a relief to play characters who are wrestling with an internal dilemma, absent the ability to go on Reddit or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok and figure out where they fit in … They’re searching for their tribe.

“A big part of this story [is about] tribe-lessness, being cut off from the social contact that helps us understand where we are in the world. Not that we’re attention-hungry narcissistic beings, but nonetheless you need that contact to understand where you are and I felt a similar disillusionment that I think Lee was feeling in the script at that point.”

Timothée Chalamet with Zendaya in a scene from 2021 hit sci-fi film Dune. Photo: Warner Bros

Chalamet, arguably, doesn’t have much to be disillusioned about. Dune director Denis Villeneuve hailed him as the “best actor of his generation”, adding “I needed that rock star charisma”. Certainly, audiences who see him in Bones and All will find themselves strangely attached to Lee’s flesh-eating ennui as he and his soulmate Maren traipse across the existential emptiness of the American Midwest.