The result has already gathered no shortage of critical and awards attention: As of being named our 2024 Film Performer of the Year, Chalamet has also been nominated for a Golden Globe and received a special accolade from the Gotham Awards, in addition to recognition from various critics groups. Edward Norton, also receiving his own acclaim for his performance as folk legend and activist Pete Seeger, was equally impressed.
“I was delighted at just the depth of his focus and seriousness, it’s everything,” Norton tells Consequence. “As a comrade in arms and an ally, he was creating, through force of will and insistence and environment, an investment in the work. That doesn’t always happen, and I loved it.”
Something that Chalamet calls “fantastically” helpful was collaborating with the rest of the cast, each playing other notable figures in Dylan’s life from 1961 to 1965. “This is really an ensemble movie in my estimation,” he says. “It’s as much about Greenwich Village in that time period, and the characters on screen like Johnny Cash or Joan Baez, or Sylvia Russo or Pete Seeger, and how they impacted Bob and how they impacted him in different periods as much as he did them.”
Chalamet adds that “everyone carried the flag of their character — in other words, everyone fiercely defended their character and what their point of view would’ve been. It brought truth to what the scenes and the story needed, because when this stuff was happening in the ’60s, Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo and Pete Seeger… They didn’t feel like they were in the Bob Dylan movie.”
Monica Barbaro says that while she was “such a Timothée Chalamet fan before,” playing Joan Baez opposite him gave her a whole new appreciation. “He worked so incredibly hard on this. I have so much respect for everything he did for this film, and I think he’s well deserving of all of the positive feedback he’s getting now.”
Like the other actors in the film, Barbaro also faced the challenge of building up her musical proficiency so she “could feel confident enough to sing these songs live. I didn’t have any singing or guitar experience prior, so for me it was just about really getting to a place where I felt like I could properly represent all of what Joan was — she was such a skilled musician.”
Aptly, the first time Barbaro and Chalamet met face-to-face was for a music rehearsal, after they had both been preparing on their own for some time. “That was a career highlight for me,” she says. “It was just incredible to trust the accompaniment of our mutual guitars and have our siloed musical training come together and make these gorgeous harmonies. Such a lovely experience.”
For her, connecting first through the music felt like the right choice. “There are certain situations where it helps to grab a coffee with a person and get to know them,” she says. “In this situation, I think it was perfect that we didn’t meet until we had a greater understanding of the music. We had a really deep understanding of who we were portraying and we could sort of just trust that all of that work would come together and we could be present with the scene. Our personal lives were out of the way, and we got to really just experience the moment as authentically as possible, as our versions of Bob and Joan.”
Looking back on the filming experience, Barbaro particularly loved getting to perform “It Ain’t Me, Babe” with Chalamet. “We did that at a point in the film where we were just very confident in our music skills, and we had both performed a lot for live audiences… It was this whirlwind, excited moment where we had only so many takes, and it was just infused with life and a lot of fun.”