>In 2018, Chalamet started taking ping-pong lessons at a 24-hour facility in Lower Manhattan. During COVID, he got rid of his living-room furniture at his Tribeca home and replaced it with a full table-tennis setup. Safdie came by one day to assess his skill level — again, four years out from actually making the movie — and as they played, wound up hurting himself. “In my apartment that wasn’t made for table-tennis, he fully sprained his ankle and was limping around for three months,” Chalamet says.>After the pandemic lockdowns, Chalamet got pretty busy with other movies. This did not mean he stopped training. “Everything I was working on, it was this secret: I had a table in London while I was making Wonka. On Dune 2, I had a table in Budapest, Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for The French Dispatch. I got myself an Airbnb in a town [around] Saint-Tropez after The French Dispatch, overlooking the water, and I was taking lessons there.”
He is the Kwisatz Haderach.
