A Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest held in New York City Sunday took the city and the internet by storm, both because of its premise and the crowds it drew, but also because of the brief appearance of the real Chalamet.
The arrival of the real Chalamet was a surprise. But the overall response to the farcical event was not.
“Let’s just say I definitely have my finger on the pulse of culture,” said organizer and YouTuber Anthony Po tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Po has been a content creator for about seven years, and briefly worked for MrBeast last year, before deciding to focus full time on his own YouTube channel, which has close to two million followers and is filled with creative stunts. The stunts include Po’s decision to eat a jar of cheeseballs in front of crowds in Union Square while masked, earning him the moniker of Cheeseball Man, a kind of quasi New York superhero status and further videos.
After dreaming up future stunts, Po landed on the idea of the lookalike contest to be held in Washington Square Park with a $50 cash prize. The event was advertised throughout New York on a series of flyers (he hired a flyer guy, who also has his finger on the pulse of when and where to flyer), as well as a Partiful invite, which drew thousands of RSVPs. Partiful also ended up sponsoring part of the event, including the $50 cash prizes that were ultimately given out to each entrant.
Po hosted the event, dressed in a top hat and tux, which started in Washington Square Park, but was then forced to move by police to a nearby park (with one attendee arrested) as the number of attendees surged. Many look-alikes were interviewed onstage about their plans with Kylie Jenner, Chalamet’s rumored girlfriend, as well as their French proficiency. In the end, Miles Mitchell, a look-alike dressed as Willy Wonka, took first place.
Po spoke with THR on Monday about the reason for hosting the event, the fallout and what may be next.
Why a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest?
I’m in a stint of just trying to do public stunts, like performance art type stuff. I think it’s really funny, and I think that a lot of creators right now aren’t really creating anything. They’re just kind of commentary channels in a weird way. So me and Paige [his producer and assistant] just sit around all day and all day and think about like, what would be fun? What would get people talking? Wholesome fun things that are free for people to gawk at and tell their grandkids about. And people always joke, I look like Timothée Chalamet. They call me “Less hot Timothée Chalamet,” so we wanted to host a lookalike competition. And the original plan was for me to enter and us to rig it. But as it got bigger, we’re like, ‘This is kind of just bigger than me,” so we wanted it to be just a fun, wholesome thing for the city.
It looks like there were hundreds of people attending yesterday. Was that what you expected?
Legally, I should probably say no, but let’s just say I definitely have my finger on the pulse of culture, and I’m very confident in my ability to hang up like 10 flyers and get 10,000 people to show up to a location.
Did you know the real Timothée would show up?
We knew he knew about it because we had some friends who worked on his new movie. I would have put a lot of money on him not showing up because of how unsafe it is for Timothée Chalamet being at a Timothée Chalamet lookalike meetup. It’s a shame. I really wanted him to compete, but it was so hectic that he couldn’t, of course.
And the police broke up the first event in Washington Square Park?
So what happened with the police, in the beginning, they were just trying to break up the crowds. It was just a meetup, and we told law enforcement, like “Listen, we’re willing to cooperate. You’ve got to let us run this thing.” And I think because they were being so law enforcement, right? That’s their job to be bad at communicating and shut people down. So, yeah, I mean, we got a $500 fine. I’ll take that 10,000 times. I don’t think I’m going to get any court summons, but if me and my team do, we will lawyer up harder than they will.
What’s the fine for? Not having a permit?
It says, “Hosting an unauthorized costume contest” It’s pathetic, but I’ll take that a million times over. The whole event cost well over $4,000 bucks. So I’ll take a $500 fine.
What was the cost?
Labor. I had three PAs. I flew one of the judges out, paid for food for everybody. Camera operators, the trophy itself was $250. And we had to get a rush order too, because it was a last minute thing.
It also looked like one of the Timothée Chalamet lookalikes got arrested?
There’s one person that got arrested, and I’m talking to him and gonna be paying his legal fees and all that good stuff. A cop came up from behind him and tried to, like, usher him out. The guy was like, “Don’t touch me.” And the cop was like, “You need to leave.”
What did you make of the chaos?
The people who went, they wanted the chaos, they wanted it to be stupid and see Timothées and have fun and talk about it with their friends. They weren’t looking for this beautifully organized pageant show. I don’t think that people want to go an event like that costs $40,000 to host, and everyone gets charged $40. It’s too formal. It’s not as good of a story.
I heard there was also a dating aspect component of the contest, where each Timothée Chalamet revealed whether they were single or not.
That was one thing we were talking about beforehand that’d be really funny. My weird pipe dream is I want a couple to meet at this event and end up getting married. So we’ll see if it happens. Gotta give it a couple years
You’ve done other events like this then?
I’ve not done lookalike contests. I ate a jar of cheese balls in front of 3,000 people and became like a New York City superhero. I’m actually fighting a guy next month because another super villain popped up and was calling me out. It’s all very silly.
When you say you’re fighting…
I’m boxing him. It’s a sanctioned boxing match in like two-and-a-half weeks. Their name is Cornhead Killer.
Is this the biggest thing you’ve done so far?
I’d say this is the biggest per capita. But I’ve definitely done more important things in my career, for sure, like more journalistic stuff and bigger videos that reach more people. I infiltrated a cult one time, and that has probably more longevity and more views than this will do for me.
Is the goal with all of these to make YouTube videos?
It depends. Cheeseball Man became way cooler than what I presume to be a YouTube video. So I held back on revealing it was me for about four months. And then people kept making exposed videos. And it became a whole thing, and people were like, commenting on every post I made, being like, “I know you are. You’re Anthony Po.” So then I came clean. For this one, our plan is to drop a video on the entire event within the next few days. And, obviously we have more than press does, because we have how it started, and the behind the scenes, and the whole why it became a thing. Again, we don’t even care if people watch it. We already succeeded. We did our job. But obviously the YouTube video needs to go up so we can make money.
Do you have other kinds of events coming up?
There’s a couple planned and scheduled. But I want to make sure people don’t know it’s me, so it doesn’t lose its charm.
I also saw something floating around social media about an upcoming Jeremy Allen White lookalike contest. Are you doing that one too?
No, I’m not. I don’t like to return to the scene of the crime, if that makes sense. I feel like I usually host these events, and then copycats pop up, and I let them do it and I move on. So I’m not behind it. I’m sure the parks department will be trying to contact me and send me a cease and desist, but I have nothing to do with it.
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