The Denis Villeneuve movie Timothée Chalamet missed out on: “He was probably swearing at me”
From a floppy-haired teen idol in Call Me By Your Name to a serious Oscar contender, Timothée Chalamet is the face that launched a thousand gay awakenings and has quickly become a must-watch name for any film fan, even if there are some people who still think he can’t act (he can).
Despite looking like he’s barely old enough to graduate school, Chalamet has been around long enough to have been rejected from a number of major films. When he was in his late teens/early 20s, he was told he wouldn’t be a good fit for the many young adult films that were out at the time, such as The Maze Runner or Divergent. He was also in the running to play Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but ultimately lost out to fellow eternal babyface Tom Holland.
However, one of the French-American’s most compelling missed roles would come in the form of the 2013 Denis Villeneuve-helmed Prisoners, which follows a kidnapping case involving two young girls. Hugh Jackman plays the father of one of the missing girls, while Jake Gyllenhaal stars as one of the police officers looking for them. Chalamet auditioned for a part in the film, but there was one thing holding him back.
“He did a great audition, but he didn’t physically fit the part,” the director revealed to GQ, “He was probably swearing at me because I didn’t take him”. Once again, Chalamet’s rake-like physique came back to haunt him; ironically, it’s now one of his most identifiable features.
Neither Chalamet nor Villeneuve revealed which role the star went up for, but based on his age at the time and the people who actually made it to the cast, it’s pretty easy to figure out that Timmy was up for the part of Ralph Dover, the son of Hugh Jackman’s character and the sister of one of the missing girls. Dylan Minette, who ended up playing the role, is only a year younger than Chalamet. Ralph doesn’t really do anything physical in the movie, so it doesn’t make a great deal of sense why the strong-jawed actor was rejected. Perhaps Villeneuve had just envisioned someone a bit beefier.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the only opportunity for the two to work together. Nine years after Prisoners hit theatres, Villeneuve and Chalamet finally collaborated on Dune, the first in a series of adaptations of Frank Herbert’s monolithic sci-fi novels. The film and its sequel turned out to be hugely successful endeavours for both men, putting them on the map in entirely new ways. They are set to reunite for the upcoming third instalment. In that same GQ interview, Villeneuve made it very clear that Chalamet was his first choice to play Paul Atreides, although he would say that, wouldn’t he…
It’s fascinating to think about how much Dune would have changed had two of its main forces worked together years earlier. Regardless, that film turned out pretty much perfectly, so it’s probably for the best that Prisoners never happened.
