Timothée Chalamet consulted Joel Coen for tips on playing Bob Dylan

At the beginning of 2020, it was announced that Timothée Chalamet will play Bob Dylan in an upcoming biopic about the singer’s early life, titled Going Electric. Presumably, the musical legend is a pretty daunting role for any actor to take on, and accordingly Chalamet has sought advice from none other than a Coen brother.

Speaking in a recent cover interview with GQ, the actor explains that he was invited out for a steak by the director of Fargo and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (and husband of Chalamet’s The French Dispatch co-star, Frances McDormand). Over dinner, Chalamet questioned Coen about Dylan, knowing that he was a fan and had gone through extensive research during the production of Inside Llewyn Davis, which was loosely based on the scene the musician came up in.

“He almost seemed weary of even talking about this stuff, it was so big and potent,” he says, but reportedly Coen did have some insights to share, which resonated with Timothée. Namely, Dylan’s prolific output: “the rapid amount of work in short succession, one groundbreaking album after another, in those early years.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Chalamet notes that he rented a small cabin in Woodstock for a month in July, in more preparation for the upcoming role in Going Electric, which is being directed by James Mangold.

In Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of Dune (watch the trailer here) Timothée Chalamet will join the Inside Llewyn Davis star Oscar Isaac, as well as Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, and more. For now, however, the film has been pushed back to October 2021.

Earlier this week, it was announced that he will also join Leonardo DiCaprio, Ariana Grande, Jonah Hill, and more in Adam McKay’s new Netflix comedy, Don’t Look Up.