Doja Cat is walking back her criticism of Timothée Chalamet amid the continued outrage over his dissing of opera and ballet. The “Marty Supreme” Oscar nominee told Matthew McConaughey during “A CNN & Variety Town Hall Event” that he didn’t want movie theaters to go the way of “ballet or opera,” where artists want to “keep this thing alive” even though “no one cares” about those art forms anymore.
Grammy winner Doja Cat originally chided Chalamet in a since-deleted TikTok post, telling him that “people give a fuck” about opera and ballet. She explained: “Hey, by the way, opera is 400 years old, ballet is 500 years old. Somebody named Tim-oh-tay Cha-lam-et had the nerve — big guy, by the way — had the nerve to say, on-camera, that nobody cares about it… You show up in a nice outfit. You sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. That’s the usual etiquette around those things. Maybe learn something from that.”
But in a new TikTok video (via People), Doja Cat revealed that she knows “nothing about opera” or ballet. She’s never even been to the theater to see either art form live in person. Doja Cat admitted that she merely jumped on the outrage bandwagon in her original video.
“I’ve never been to a ballet. I’ve never seen an opera. And I took it upon myself yesterday to kind of give it to the man because there is a culture based around outrage and things like that and people want to feel like they’re part of something. It’s a need to connect, whether good or bad,” Doja Cat exoplained.
“What I was doing yesterday was virtue signaling because I wanted to connect and I knew that Timothée’s goof up was something that I could leverage in order for people to connect with me and fuck with me,” she continued. “And it’s easy. It’s a modern way to garner clicks, likes, approval and all kinds of things like that from people. And so I did that yesterday, and I didn’t really think about why I was doing it.”
The rapper concluded, “I don’t know anything about opera. I don’t know anything about ballet, and I’ve never been to either shows. And I think I just wanted a hug. I think that’s all that I wanted. I wanted a hug. I wanted to feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to be pat on the back the way everybody else is patting each other on the back in the comments sections. And I wanted to look like a hero, and that’s what happened. And when I got it, I didn’t like it so much…. it just kind of furthers the fact that sometimes I think shit and then I’m like, never mind. So never mind.”
Chalamet’s comments have earned widespread backlash on social media and among entertainment figures, from Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” to Juliette Binoche at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival. Ballet icon Misty Copeland reacted by questioning why Chalamet invited her to promote “Marty Supreme” with him. Italian opera legend Andrea Bocelli expressed surprise over Chalamet’s diss.
“I believe we often tend to keep our distance from what we have not yet truly encountered,” Bocelli said. “Opera and ballet are art forms that have crossed centuries and continue to speak to the human heart, because they answer a deep need for beauty, truth, and emotion. They are not arts of the past, but living languages that can still move us, make us reflect, and bring different generations together.”
Chalamet has yet to comment publicly on the backlash over his original comments.