Timothée Chalamet has been playing ping-pong since 2018 to prepare for ‘Marty Supreme’
Timothée Chalamet has detailed the seven years of preparation he spent in order to play a ping-pong supremo in Marty Supreme.
While the upcoming Josh Safdie production was filmed in 2024, it had been in the works since his wife, producer Sara Rossein, stumbled upon a copy of Marty Reisman’s memoirs, The Money Player, in a second-hand store in 2018.
Safdie recalled of that crucial finding in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter: “I showed it to Timmy because he and I were talking at the very beginning of all of this. I said to him, ‘I want to do a movie in this world. Check out what this player looks like.’ He’s like, ‘Holy shit, that looks like me.’”
The wheels then started turning on the film, and although Chalamet has made an array of movies during this time, including the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Wonka, as well as Dune 2. However, throughout all of these projects, he had one eye on Marty Supreme. He also transformed his living room during the pandemic in order to squeeze a ping-pong table into his home.
Chalamet revealed to the same publication, “Everything I was working on, it was this secret: I had a table in London while I was making Wonka. On Dune 2, I had a table in Budapest, Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi.”
He continued, “I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for The French Dispatch. I got myself an Airbnb in a town [around] Saint-Tropez after The French Dispatch, overlooking the water, and I was taking lessons there.”
The Oscar-nominee similarly spent years diving into the world of Dylan for A Complete Unknown, stating of the privilege that came with having time to prepare, “These were the two spoiled projects where I got years to work on them. This is the truth. I was working on both these things concurrently.”
Chalamet also said that if “anyone thinks this is cap”, he promised it is “all documented, and it’ll be put out”.
Marty Supreme had its world premiere on October 6th at New York Film Festival during a surprise screening. The movie was introduced by Safdie and Chalamet before co-stars, including Tyler, the Creator and Gwyneth Paltrow, appeared following the movie.
It is set to arrive in UK cinemas on December 26th, 2025.
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