At the time, Timmy was promoting the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, so, he took the opportunity to show off his musical chops on live TV and perform a trio of Dylan tracks: “Outlaw Blues,” “Three Angels,” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”
As anyone who watched the episode will recall, Timothée was absolutely spectacular. Now, nearly exactly a year later, the 30-year-old star has pulled back the curtain on exactly how his double duty stint came to be — and it sounds like it was no mean feat.
During a live conversation with filmmaker Richard Curtis in London over the weekend, Timothée revealed that Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, wasn’t initially on board with the idea of him doing double duty.
“Lorne Michaels said, ‘Hey, do you want to host SNL?’ I said, ‘Yeah, can I do the music?’ He’s like, ‘No.’ I said, ‘All right, I’m not doing it,'” he remembered, saying that he “refused to take no for an answer.”
Eventually, Lorne agreed, but Timothée’s hard work was not over. “I spent over six figures out of my pocket to do the SNL performance,” he shared.
He didn’t go into detail about why this happened or exactly how the money was spent. However, a source told Entertainment Weekly that Timothée paid for production expenses for his musical performances, including the band’s fees and set construction costs.
Typically, these costs are covered by an artist’s record label, which could explain why Timothée wound up personally footing the bill.
But, if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Timmy in the past couple of years, it’s that he has very specific ideas about how he wants to promote his movies, and he’s willing to do everything in his power to make it happen.
“I really don’t look at it as promotion or as marketing. I see myself as an artist expanding…This is the new way of doing stuff. I’m trying to reach audiences. I don’t want to be in the pretentious in-crowd,” Timothée explained during his recent conversation. “Marty Supreme in America had the least frequent moviegoing audience this year — people that weren’t going to see everything. That’s my favorite feedback on the movie. So the most pretentious answer I could give you, which I actually honestly feel, is that it’s not marketing or promotion. That sounds like a gimmick, and this is not a gimmick. This is coming from my heart and my soul.”
We love to see a celeb put their money where their mouth is! Keep dreaming big, Timothée.
