Skip To Content

    Timothée Chalamet Had Some Hilarious Inspiration For His "Don't Look Up" Character

    "The first thing he said to me was 'I want a mullet.'"

    Timothée Chalamet was apparently one of the millions of people who watched Tiger King — and became totally obsessed.

    A close up of Timothée

    So obsessed that he actually used the show's star, Joe Exotic, as inspiration for his character in Don't Look Up.

    Joe poses with a tiger

    In the film, Timothée plays Yule, an Evangelical Christian who forms a relationship with Jennifer Lawrence's character Kate Dibiasky.

    Timothée's character walks through a supermarket with Jennifer and Leonardo DiCaprio's charcters

    When he got to set, costume designer Susan Matheson says Timothée asked if Yule could look like Joe Exotic.

    Joe sits in a convertible with a tiger

    "The first thing he said to me was 'I want a mullet,' and of course, he sent me pictures of Joe Exotic. At the time everyone was obsessed with Joe," Susan told Vogue.

    She continued, "Instead I found this guy from New Zealand who had this amazing mullet and the moment I showed it to Timotheé, he said: 'Bingo!'"

    A close up of Timothée with a mullet and a backwards hat

    Susan went on to reveal other small details about Timotheé's wardrobe that viewers may not have noticed, like the religious inspiration in most of his outfits.

    A close up of Timothée

    "I wanted to reference the religious element of his character, so I used vintage patches and T-shirts from Christian camps. They aren't always visible, but underneath his other clothes he'll always have on one of those shirts," Susan shared.

    Timothée's character stands in a checkout line at a supermarket

    And overall, Susan says styling Timotheé and the cast was exciting because they were her favorite kind of characters.

    "That characters I love are always going to be gritty outsiders. Someone who is a bit of an iconoclast and doesn't follow the same path as everyone else. I get very excited whenever there is any character like that but here, we had several," Susan concluded.

    Some of the characters sit in the oval office