Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
Last week, the world briefly stood still when Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner were spotted together in the audience of Beyoncé’s Los Angeles stop of her Renaissance World Tour, cozying up to one another in the little celebs-only playpen of SoFi Stadium. If you’re an average person, like myself, you simply remarked at the nonchalance of Kylothée’s relationship going public after months of headlines and speculation about their dating. If you’re a Timothée Chalamet superstan, it was as if you just learned that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. That’s fitting, because World War III has begun: It’s Timothée Chalamet fans, storming the beaches of social media, fighting a one-sided battle.
Until Jenner and Chalamet made their official debut, fans had been suspicious of their romance’s veracity, and rightfully so. The only real updates since the supposed news leaked in April were a constant barrage of planted press items, claiming that the couple was “taking things slow” and “getting to know each other.” The covert nature of their relationship was the correct move, it seems, given how the most fervent base of Chalamet’s fans have reacted. Claims that this is just a PR stunt have been the most rampant, despite my claims that neither party really has anything to gain from tonguing in public. A few days before the Beyoncé show, even British Vogue was debating the legitimacy of the Jenner/Chalamet relationship; in an article that has since been scrubbed, a Vogue writer wondered: “What do they do together? Does he hold her makeup brushes while she contours?”
That thinly veiled misogyny, which paints Chalamet as some great, sage thinker and Jenner as a little more than a vain makeup influencer, has been echoed in the musings of Club Chalamet, perhaps the most active and unreasonable of Timothée stan accounts. Club Chalamet is operated by Simone Cromer, a 56-year-old freelance film critic who has been active in the superfan scene for quite some time—dating back to at least 2018, when she was allegedly skipped over by Chalmet during an audience Q&A at a screening of Beautiful Boy. Most recently, she found herself under fire for coming out against the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, following the delay of Dune: Part 2.