Chalamet brought a lot to the table for this role
Los Angeles Times
|December 31, 2025
Actor practiced table tennis relentlessly, and it seems to show in film ‘Marty Supreme.’
First clue that someone is serious about pingpong: They call it table tennis.
Second clue: They bring their own paddle.
Timothée Chalamet dropped a third clue on movie sets all over the globe. To prepare for his role in the delightfully frenetic “Marty Supreme,” the two-time Oscar nominee traveled for years with a table in tow, training and presumably enjoying the sport at the center of the current holiday season hit.
Director Josh Safdie enlisted the husband-and-wife table-tennis teaching tandem of Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang — a former U.S. Olympian—to elevate Chalamet’s game as well as serve as technical advisors on set.
But Chalamet was already playing nearly well enough to emulate a world champion on screen. He'd taken lessons and done his homework — setting up atable in the living room of his New York apartment and playing throughout the pandemic.
“Everything I was working on, it was this secret,” Chalamet told the Hollywood Reporter. “I had a table in London while I was making ‘Wonka.’ On ‘Dune: Part Two,’ I had a table in Budapest [and] Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘The French Dispatch.’ ”
This story is from the December 31, 2025 edition of Los Angeles Times.
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