Whoopi Goldberg spoke out on Monday to send a warning to the Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet. This came after Chalamet, 30, found himself in hot water for claiming that “no one cares” about ballet and opera.
Goldberg Slams Chalamet
During a recent Variety and CNN town hall, Chalamet controversially claimed that he does not “want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though, like, no one cares about this anymore.'”
This didn’t sit well with Goldberg. Indeed, the 70 year-old Oscar-winner fired back at Chalamet on Monday morning’s episode of her ABC talk show The View.
“When you crap on somebody else’s art form, it doesn’t feel good,” Goldberg said. “It doesn’t feel good to see.”
Goldberg went on to say that even though Chalamet immediately recognized that his comments were offensive, he still doubled down on them.
“I just lost 14 cents in viewership,” Chalamet said with a laugh. “I just took shots for no reason.”
“And you probably didn’t realize that until you said, ‘Oh, I’m in trouble,’ but then you compounded it and said, like, ‘14 cents.’ No, when people get mad, it’ll be a lot more than 14 cents,” Goldberg responded.
“So be careful,” she added. “I’m just saying. Be careful, boy.”
The audience attending the taping of The View immediately applauded Goldberg’s comments.
“He is a boy to me. He’s a boy to me,” she continued. “So no disrespect. And, really, don’t apologize when you’ve insulted, because it doesn’t sound right. You know, you can’t say, ‘Oh, this is dumb, no disrespect….’ That’s absolute disrespect.”
Goldberg’s Co-Hosts Weigh In
Goldberg’s co-hosts were quick to agree with her. Sunny Hostin said that she was “offended and disappointed” by Chalamet’s words, particularly “as a member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.”
“I didn’t realize that he was that vapid and that shallow,” Hostin, 57, said of the actor.
Meanwhile, Sara Haines joked that this “seems like a family issue,” as the Chalamet’s “grandmother, mother and sister all danced in the New York City Ballet.”
“But I also feel like this is a good example of where people are so American culture-centric. Like, these are international art forms,” Haines said of Chalamet’s comments. She believes that he may have come “from a place of not knowing that.”
Check out their full comments for yourself in the video below.
Chalamet Hit With Backlash
Chalamet has received tons of backlash for the disparaging comments that he made about ballet and the opera. The Grammy-winning opera singer Isabelle Leonard said that she was “shocked that someone so seemingly successful can be so ineloquent and narrow-minded in his views about art.”
The singer Doja Cat called out Chalamet in a since-deleted TikTok video for having “the nerve to say on camera that nobody cares about” opera and ballet.
“It doesn’t matter if the industry is having a tough time at any time — which, a lot of industries have a tough time. Your industry has a tough time, my industry has a tough time,” said Doja Cat, 30. “Doesn’t mean people don’t care about it. People care. The dancers care, the singers care, the audience cares. There’s still an audience.”
Chalamet is currently nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor for his work in the movie Marty Supreme. It remains to be seen how all of this backlash will actually impact his chances of taking home the coveted award next Sunday.