Maybe this is reason enough alone to give Timothée Chalamet an Oscar for “Marty Supreme.”
The 30-year-old actor was so committed to his performance as Marty Mauser, the desperately ambitious, wannabe table tennis champion in 1950s New York, that he didn’t use a stunt double for one of the most shocking scenes in director Josh Safdie’s manic, audacious movie, one of Chalamet’s co-stars has revealed in a new interview.
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Leading up to the scene, the ever-hustling Mauser is rushing from one harebrained scheme to another in order to get cash to travel to Tokyo to compete in the world championships for table tennis. He ends up scamming his way into a party hosted by Milton Rockwell, a successful pen entrepreneur whose company is using the ping-pong competition as a way to sell his products to the post-World War II Asian market. Mauser had earlier impressed Rockwell with his gamesmanship, but he irked the businessman by refusing his invitation to come along to Tokyo, on the condition that he lose a match to Japanese champion Koto Endo.
But the clock is ticking and Mauser has run out of options for raising money. He also happens to be having an affair with Rockwell’s wife, retired Hollywood actress Kay Stone (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), but he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about whether Rockwell knows that. He just hopes he can convince Rockwell to give him a seat on his private plane to Japan. After getting into Rockwell’s party, Mauser finds the millionaire in his living room and tells him that he’ll agree to terms he had set out earlier: to throw the match to Endo.
Unfortunately for Mauser, the ruthless Rockwell isn’t so quick to offer the cocky young athlete a second chance. In a display of power, he decides to subject Mauser to a test to see how much he’s willing to sacrifice in order to get to Tokyo. It turns out that Mauser is willing to sacrifice a lot, notably his dignity. He agrees to drop his pants in front of Rockwell and a group of his rich friends, bend over Rockwell’s knee and submit to being spanked with a table tennis paddle. “You have no power here,” Rockwell tells Mauser before smacking his bare buttocks with all his strength.
In an interview with Variety, “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, who makes his acting debut playing Rockwell, talked about filming that scene and confirmed that Chalamet didn’t use a stunt double; audiences are seeing Chalamet’s real butt.
“When it came time to whack him, there was a stunt ass. There was a double,” O’Leary said. “(Chalamet) wouldn’t do it. He said he’ll do it himself. He didn’t want some other ass immortalized.”
O’Leary told Variety he was supposed to use a fake paddle to soften the blow, but the prop immediately broke on the first hit. In a further demonstration of Chalamet’s dedication to his art, he agreed to O’Leary using a real paddle. O’Leary said that shooting the scene “went on for hours,” with Safdie demanding about 40 takes until 4 a.m.
“Josh was saying, ‘You’ve got to wind up harder,’” O’Leary told Variety. “I was really whacking him.”
O’Leary said the spanking sequence was a “a pivotal scene of humiliation” for Mauser. From Rockwell’s standpoint, the young table tennis hustler “had pissed me off so much and insulted me so many times that capital punishment was correct.”
Such dedication by Chalamet is paying off, both for him and for “Marty Supreme,” according to Vulture. Over the four-day Christmas weekend, the R-rated film took in a healthy $17.5 million at the domestic box-office. It also has received glowing reviews, making it a leading contender for several Academy Awards nominations, including best picture, best director and best actor for Chalamet.
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