Monica Barbaro didn’t confront Timothée Chalamet over his ballet comments
Monica Barbaro lays out her take on Timothée Chalamet’s ballet comments — along with whether she ever addressed them directly.
Asked about the uproar over Timothée Chalamet’s “ballet and opera” remarks, Monica Barbaro said her view was shaped by time they spent together on the set of A Complete Unknown. She told host Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused that Chalamet often spoke about his sister, a dancer, with clear admiration — which made Barbaro think his viral comment was less a swipe at the art forms and more an observation about audiences drifting away from them.
“No, I didn’t.”
That was Barbaro’s answer when Horowitz asked if she’d texted Chalamet after the backlash. She added that only Chalamet can explain exactly what he meant, but she was reluctant to jump straight to offense when, in her view, ballet and opera really do struggle for attention, funding and accessibility.
Why her take carries weight
Before Top Gun and rom-coms, Barbaro’s first language was dance. Her résumé reads like someone who knows the stakes for classical arts firsthand:
- Started ballet training at age 5
- Performed by 12 as Fritz in The Nutcracker with Marin Ballet
- Earned a BFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts
- Trained beyond classical ballet in modern, salsa, flamenco and West African dance
Barbaro and Chalamet are co-stars in A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan project that brought them together off-camera — and, at least for Barbaro, added context to a controversy that’s lingered since awards season.