Oscar Isaac Thought Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan Was ‘Unhealthy Thought’ Till This Satisfied Him

Oscar Isaac was not offered on Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan till he heard the actor sing Dylan’s songs.

On the 2024 Gotham Awards in New York Metropolis on Monday, Dec. 2, Isaac, 45, took introduced Chalamet, 28, and A Full Unknown director James Mangold with the Visionary Tribute award.

As he recalled working with Chalamet on the 2021 film Dune: Half One, he mentioned Chalamet first advised him and costars Josh Brolin and Steven McKinley Henderson about A Full Unknown whereas they had been spending time in Chalamet’s trailer on set.

“He begins telling us about his subsequent challenge he was engaged on. A film with the great director James Mangold a few younger Bob Dylan coming to New York in 1961,” recalled Isaac, who as soon as portrayed a folks musician in 1961 New York within the 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis. “And my first thought, ‘It appears like a very unhealthy thought.’ I imply, it is Dylan. It is the holy of holies for me. It simply did not sound correct.”

“Then Timmy takes out his guitar — not a great signal — and begins taking part in ‘Woman from the North Nation,’ ” Isaac added. “Now, it is a tune I do know deeply, to my core, and Josh, Steven and I, we’re not your common Timmy Chalamet groupies. We’re grizzled film vets. We have seen some s—.”

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Though Isaac estimated Chalamet “had simply began studying the guitar” and how one can sing at the moment, he felt the actor approached Dylan’s music “not as if he was studying one thing new however as if he was remembering one thing he’d at all times identified, simply rediscovering it.”

“I look over at a wide-smiling Steven, and he simply says, ‘Yeah, child,’ and the three of us simply sat there watching this younger man join with one thing mysterious,” he added. “And that’s the nature of people music. To cite the good Llewyn Davis, ‘If it by no means will get previous and it was by no means new, it is a folks tune.’ ” 

Chalamet has been open about spending 5 years making ready to play Dylan, now 83, within the upcoming A Full Unknown, which covers Dylan’s early rise to fame and resolution to start taking part in electrical guitars within the mid Nineteen Sixties.

In Isaac’s estimation, Chalamet and filmmaker Mangold, 60, captured Dylan’s essence within the new film, which is in theaters Dec. 25.

“James and Timothée have approached this work with a mixture of humility and irreverence, similar to Dylan approached the Nice American Songbook, probing acquainted types to rediscover the reality of the current second,” Isaac mentioned throughout his Gotham Awards speech as he introduced the filmmaker-actor duo to the stage.