In a recent post on X, Bob Dylan made clear his support of Timothée Chalamet playing him in James Mangold‘s upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown. The iconic singer-songwriter wrote that Chalamet is “a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me.” And on Monday, the eve of the film’s LA premiere, Chalamet told Deadline that reading Dylan’s words felt “really, really affirming”.
As for what else Dylan makes of the project as a whole, Chalamet said, “It’s hard to tell. He’s a mysterious, elusive figure. So I figured if he or his team didn’t want me to be a part of it, I would’ve known about that. But equally, I didn’t really know how involved he’d be.”
While writer-director Mangold has confirmed to Deadline that Dylan hasn’t yet seen the film, Chalamet noted that the musician “got creatively involved with Mangold, which was great, he gave his input on the script,” but also that the project was never intended to replicate Dylan in a precise way. “It’s an interpretation,” he said. “This was a fable. This was not meant to be a Wikipedia fact-for-fact recreation of how it was. Otherwise, you might as well just watch the footage that exists.”
A Complete Unknown covers Dylan’s early emergence into folk music up to the point where he picked up an electric guitar and leaned into rock. Mangold and his co-writer Jay Cocks based the screenplay on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, by Elijah Wald and Edward Norton stars as Seeger, Monica Barbaro is Joan Baez and Elle Fanning is Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie (a version of Suze Rotolo, renamed at Dylan’s request).
Chalamet spent five years preparing for his role, learning guitar and performing all the songs in the film himself. As to whether he’s thought about writing or performing music in future, he said “I never have in a serious way, but then there’s no such thing as serious writing.”
Chalamet also explained the decision to sing live in the film. He had initially pre-recorded tracks in LA with the film’s executive music producer Nick Baxter. But, he said, “When it came time to do it, it just was better live and it felt more lived in and more authentic. It caused a bit of a panic on set, but it was worth it. And Edward Norton was sort of like the devil in my ear, saying, ‘Do it live. You sound better live.’”
Asked if Dylan’s tendency to shy away from the fanfare around intense fame resonated for him personally, Chalamet said, “I think it’s true of any creative probably. I was talking about this with a friend the other day, that if you go to art school, or if you’re an aspiring actor or singer, ultimately it’s the lonely kid growing up that ever really had something to say. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a great artist without. One could also have had a lot of friends growing up, or a vibrant inner life. But often, it’s isolation or moments of repose or introspection or observation—or restlessness in my case—that then give you a voice. And the trick that I think Bob mastered pretty quickly early on in the interpretation of the movie—I can’t speak for the guy in real life—is to protect that. And your experience with someone on the street who’s unfamiliar with your music or your art, somehow will be of greater fuel in some moments in life than someone who’s sycophantic.”
SearchLight Pictures’ A Complete Unknown is in theaters December 25th.
