Timothée Chalamet Credits Being ‘Knighted’ by Lil B for Launching Acting Career

Is Lil B the reason Timothée Chalamet is so successful? The Complete Unknown star sure thinks so. In an interview with Narduwar, the actor (and hip-hop fan) shared that he credits his success to an onstage moment with Lil B when he was still in college.

“Lil B is a hugely formative artist in my life and career. He dropped an album called I’m Gay and the rollout was very ambiguous about his sexuality or the meaning of the album. I was just inspired from the sense that, ‘Wow this guy is doing whatever the fuck he wants,’” Chalamet said, referring to the rapper’s 2011 LP. “It was just so cool to me that he had this genre of hip-hop that he was just all over the place.”

Chalamet previously told the story to Vulture, saying he was raising his hand at a public Q&A with the rapper when the Dune actor asked him to knight him.

“Love Lil B. I met him at NYU. I had $50 from a commercial I did. I bribed a kid to give me his ticket. I was in there all alone front row to the right,” he told Narduwar. “I raised my hand, got called on by him, I told him I was gonna ask out my crush. He invited me onstage and he knighted me.”

“He said, ‘That boy’s hand has been blessed.’ And from there, my acting career took off,” Chalamet recounted. “Thank you, Based God. I was struggling before that, I had just done Royal Pains and then I was nominated for an Oscar before I was 22. Shout out Lil B, nothing is possible without Lil B.”

Chalamet has long credited Lil B for being “transformative” in his career, telling Vulture that the rapper’s “preaching about live and let live” really pushed him in his career.

“There’s a video online of it,” Chalamet said in 2017. “It’s recognizably me. I’ll see if someone can find it.” In a 2018 interview he did with Harry Styles for i-D Magazine, Chalamet expressed that Lil B had been “really impactful for me.”

In a video of the moment, Chalamet took the stage and kneeled as Lil B knighted him, then kissed his hand as the crowd clapped for Chalamet and Lil B. “That’s my brother right there,” Lil B declared. “His hand is gold.”

In the interview with Narduwar, Chalamet also joked that in a recent hang with Tyler, the Creator, the rapper said he “could sense [Chalamet’s] aura” based on the Lil B encounter.

From Rolling Stone US.