When holiday movie-goers file into the theaters on Christmas Day for the first public showings of the new Timothée Chalamet movie Marty Supreme, they’ll likely be unaware that one of its stars nearly passed on the project – entirely by accident.
‘I first got the script about a year ago,’ confessed Daily Mail columnist Kevin O’Leary, ‘then I forgot about it.’
It’s perhaps a good thing for audiences that the Tinseltown fates had other plans, for O’Leary – star of the reality show Shark Tank and a globally-renowned entrepreneur – may have discovered yet another career opportunity.
‘It brings me little pleasure to inform you that Kevin O’Leary, or Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful, is excellent in Marty Supreme,’ wrote a New York Magazine critic on Wednesday, in what they likely intended as a backhanded compliment.
‘O’Leary has virtually no professional acting experience, and yet he’s one of Marty Supreme’s, main characters,’ the critic continued. ‘But it all works out because he’s ultimately just … playing himself. Which is to say: a fat-cat entrepreneur and bona fide jerk.’
Well, apparently, no offense taken. O’Leary agrees. In fact, it’s central to why the director sought him out for this role as Milton Rockwell, one of the richest men in America in 1952, who comes across Marty Mauser, a ping-pong prodigy with lofty ambitions.
But first, O’Leary needed to read the script.
‘The script was sent to me in an email with a PDF file,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I was up at my lake house, so I drove into town to a little print shop and I asked them to print a copy because I wanted to read it on my dock with a pencil and make notes.’
‘I first got the script about a year ago,’ confessed Daily Mail columnist Kevin O’Leary, ‘then I forgot about it’ (Pictured: O’Leary with Tyler, The Creator (center) and Timothee Chalamet at Marty Supreme premiere in New York City on December 16)
‘Then I forgot about it. I left it on the bar,’ he said. ‘It sort of fell off my radar screen.’
By chance, one of O’Leary’s guests at the lake house picked up the script early one morning after a long-night – and he couldn’t put it down.
‘By the time I got up at 9:30, he was still flipping the last pages,’ remembered O’Leary. ‘He said to me, ‘Kevin, have you read this f****ing thing? This is the most insane story I’ve ever read. The guy who wrote this is a very sick person.
‘That was the reaction of a random guy randomly reading a random script he knew nothing about.’
Still O’Leary wasn’t sure. but – as Marty Supreme director Josh Safdie (previously of Uncut Gems) knew and New York Magazine came to recognize – there was only one Milton Rockwell.
‘The first thing Josh said [to me] was, ‘Look, let’s just clear the air on this first. We’ve been talking to a lot of people about this role and we need a real a**hole for it and you’re it,’ recalled O’Leary.
Still, there was one last hurdle.
O’Leary’s talent agent advised him against taking the job.
‘They said, “Kevin, we built a pretty big franchise for you. We’re all making money together. You certainly are. We are. We’re not all 100 percent behind this idea of you taking a scripted role, because the risk is you’re going to s**t the bed,” said O’Leary.
But O’Leary says he pushed back, insisting that in order to keep life interesting he tries to attempt endeavors outside of his ‘comfort zone.’
It’s perhaps a good thing for audiences that the Tinseltown fates had other plans, for O’Leary – star of the reality show Shark Tank and a globally-renowned entrepreneur – may have discovered yet another career opportunity.
O’Leary insisted that in order to keep life interesting he tries to attempt endeavors outside of his ‘comfort zone’
And so, months later, he found himself sitting across from Chalamet, a method actor, preparing to shoot his first scene.
‘We talked for a couple of minutes before we started about the cadence of what we were about to do,’ said O’Leary. ‘Then Chalamet gets up, walks about 20 feet, doesn’t talk to anybody, comes back and boom. He’s in character.
‘He’s not Timmy Chalamet anymore. He’s Marty Supreme. And then it was very easy once he’s the kid, and I’m Milton, to crap on him, because he was an arrogant little a**hole.’
‘I don’t know what the rules of acting are,’ he continued. ‘I don’t care. I’ve never taken acting lessons. I probably never will. I’ll let the critics decide whether I s**t the bed or not.’
