No, Timothée Chalamet did not lose the Oscar because of his ballet comments

Dubai: By now you have probably seen the headlines. Timothée Chalamet made some dismissive comments about ballet and opera, the internet erupted, the Royal Ballet sent a pointed invitation, Misty Copeland weighed in, and Saturday Night Live had a field day.

The narrative wrote itself: Chalamet torpedoed his Oscar chances days before the ceremony.

There is just one problem with that story. The votes were already in.

Oscar voting for the 98th Academy Awards closed on March 5 at 5pm Pacific Time. The ballet clip did not start gaining serious traction until that same evening, exploding across social media over the March 6 to 7 weekend.

By the time opera houses were posting snarky Instagram replies and ballet dancers were making TikToks, all 10,000-plus Academy ballots had already been submitted, tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and legally sealed.

The controversy that dominated an entire week of headlines arrived too late to change a single vote.

The real turning point happened well before anyone was talking about Swan Lake. At the BAFTAs, Chalamet lost in a major upset to Robert Aramayo for I Swear. Then, on March 1, four days before voting closed, Michael B. Jordan walked into the Actor Awards, formerly known as the SAG Awards, and won to a rapturous, standing ovation. Viola Davis was visibly ecstatic. The entire room erupted.

That moment mattered enormously. Actors make up roughly 1,300 of the Academy's 10,000 members, and the Actor Awards represent the largest single voting bloc within the organisation.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper noted the significance directly, pointing out that many voters wait until the final day or two to submit their ballots, meaning momentum from the Producers Guild and Actor Awards can be decisive.

The numbers backed it up. On prediction market Kalshi, Chalamet's odds dropped from 68% to 51% after Jordan's Actor Awards win. Jordan surged from 12% to 34%. When the ballet controversy hit the following weekend, Chalamet's numbers fell further, but it made no difference. The ballots were sealed.

Marty Supreme's utter loss during the BAFTA's where I Swear's Aramayo was chosen instead of Chalamet for the Best Actor's award was also an added sign that the Oscar's wouldn't be an easy ride for the actor.

Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor at the 98th Academy Awards for his dual performance as twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, making him the first actor in Oscar history to win Best Actor for a dual role. It was his first nomination and his first win.

His performance in Sinners had been building momentum throughout the entire awards season. The film received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, and Jordan was not just campaigning on his own performance but representing a film the Academy had clearly embraced across virtually every category.

When Adrien Brody opened the envelope at the Dolby Theatre, the audience leapt to their feet. Jordan appeared genuinely stunned. "Man, God is good," he began, before acknowledging his mother, his father who had flown in from Ghana, and his siblings.

He spoke about "betting on a culture and betting on original ideas and original artistry," recognised director Ryan Coogler as a collaborator and friend, and paid tribute to the Black actors who had accepted Oscars before him, naming Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, and Forest Whitaker.

At 30, with three Oscar nominations already on his résumé and a filmography that includes Call Me by Your Name, Dune, and A Complete Unknown, Chalamet is not exactly suffering. But the comparison to Leonardo DiCaprio is already being made. Like DiCaprio, he may simply have to wait.

As for the ballet comments, Conan O'Brien made the first joke about them roughly ten seconds into his opening monologue. The Academy, it turns out, had already moved on long before that.

Areeba Hashmi is a trainee at Gulf News.