Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar chances.
Walking into the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, 15 March, O’Leary revealed he had just placed a $1,000 bet on Chalamet winning Best Actor, and he had a very specific reason for his confidence.
“I just put 1,000 bucks on Kalshi walking in here that he’s gonna win,” O’Leary, 71, told Variety.
“Because I know the voting stopped long before that controversy happened.”
It’s a calculated read on the situation.
Chalamet, 30, has been at the centre of an ongoing backlash after remarks he made during a February town hall with Matthew McConaughey, in which he said he had no desire to work in ballet or opera, art forms where, as he put it, the pitch was keeping something alive that “no one cares about anymore.”
He caught himself almost immediately, offering a quick nod of respect to anyone in those worlds and joking that he’d just taken shots for no reason.
It didn’t stop the internet from turning on him.
But O’Leary, who stars alongside Chalamet in Marty Supreme, isn’t buying the backlash narrative, and he’s also quick to defend the man behind the headlines.
“He’s a really great guy, his mother’s really nice,” he said. “The kid is a great kid. He took a bum rap on that. By the way, he gave a lot of promo to opera houses and ballet.”
The timing of the controversy is central to O’Leary’s wager.
While the Variety interview was published before Oscar voting closed, the comments didn’t go viral until after ballots had already been cast, meaning the wave of public criticism that followed may have had little to no impact on how Academy members actually voted.
Whether that logic pays off remains to be seen.
