Cheers Timmy!’: UK’s Royal Ballet and Opera head thanks Timothée Chalamet for ‘immediate boost’ to ticket sales

Timothée Chalamet may have faced serious backlash over his Ballet and Opera comment, but it seems his opinion has done something better for these art forms. It is evident because in a recent interview, the chief of London’s Royal Ballet and Opera, Alex Beard, has thanked Timothée Chalamet for giving an “immediate boost” to their ticket sales. Speaking to the Times, the RBO head, Alex Beard, called the public reaction “just fantastic” and said he was pleased his organisation had not followed similar institutions in rebuking Chalamet. “I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet,” he said. “We simply said, ‘Take a look at what we’re doing, mate,’ for instance, the fact that the largest portion of our audience by age is 20 to 30-year-olds.“And you know what? Our post got two and a half million engagements and half a million shares, just on Instagram. And our ticket sales got an immediate boost. So cheers, Timmy!”The RBO head’s reaction comes after ‘Marty Supreme’ star expressed his opinion in February during a conversation with Matthew McConaughey, which later faced severe backlash. At the time, the Oscar-nominated actor, who was promoting his film, expressed his relief that he was working in cinema, rather than opera or ballet, “where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more.’”Chalamet, whose mother and grandmother worked in ballet, swiftly added: “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.” Days later, Chalamet’s comment became one of the most controversial moments of his career and received serious public backlash.