Timothée Chalamet in an interview about his new film “Bones and All”

Mr. Chalamet, in your new film Bones and All you play a cannibal. After that, you probably didn’t order any more rare steaks, right?

No, only medium! I’m actually not a big meat eater anyway. I found an interpretation that I heard about our film exciting: it may be about the fact that the mere fact that we are human makes it impossible for us to really eat ethically or live ecologically correctly. It’s a bit like the daydreams I used to have about places in the Caribbean or the tropics that are completely untouched by human hands. As soon as I showed up there, my presence would have corrupted that virginity. In Bones and All, our characters feel cursed by their existence precisely because they feel there is no escape from their condition. But when Maren and Lee meet and realize that they are both in the same position, a hope for love and humanity flares up, at least temporarily.

You already know the director Luca Guadagnino from your film “Call Me By Your Name”. He says he wouldn’t have made Bones and All without you. How close was the collaboration?

The experience of watching this film was truly unique. I quite liked the fact that unlike “Call Me By Your Name” I’m not at the center of the story and it’s someone else that the audience identifies with. Also, as an actor, I’ve never had as much influence on the development of my character as I have here. That was great, also because the role as originally written in the script didn’t really interest me that much. Because back then, Lee was still a kind of self-confident high school athlete, cocky and brave, who took Maren under his wing without hesitation. I wouldn’t have been the right person for that.

What interested you instead?

I liked the idea that this is someone who exists on the fringes of society. Who – because he wants to hide his cannibalism – remains unobtrusive in the shadows, a bit neglected and not concerned about what he looks like. Lee’s fragility and the chaos of his life really appealed to me, and I thought a lot about how to convey that visually. His hair color for example, that was my idea!

“Bones and All” is on the one hand a tender love story, on the other hand a kind of bloody horror film with murderous protagonists. Weren’t you concerned that these two elements might get in each other’s way?

I just hope that everyone who goes into the film expecting a creepy cannibal story will end up realizing that it’s actually about something very different, much more subtle. Moments of shock and bloodshed are not necessarily on the agenda. Of course, there’s no denying it: this young couple does terrible things and kills other people. But films like “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Badlands” or of course series like “Breaking Bad” have shown that as a viewer you can root for characters who are anything but good people. And as an actor, I naturally find roles like this all the more exciting. Meryl Streep once said that the parts you dislike the most about your character are actually the most important. Because only when you have accepted them can you really embody them as a three-dimensional human being. That’s why I’m always particularly interested when a role also has questionable and unpleasant aspects.