Timothée Chalamet and Josh Safdie almost worked together on 2018 short film

Timothée Chalamet and Josh Safdie almost worked together for the first time seven years before Marty Supreme.

The Call Me By Your Name star is currently nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as hustler and table tennis champion Marty Mauser in Safdie's solo directorial debut Marty Supreme.

During an interview with W Magazine, Safdie revealed that he was originally supposed to work with Chalamet on a short film.

"The first thing we were going to do together was a short film, a branded-content thing. This was in 2018, and it was going to be him trying to buy an Angora rabbit for his girlfriend," he recalled. "Maybe three days before we were supposed to start shooting, the brand killed the project."

Seeing the silver lining of the situation, the Uncut Gems added, "In a way, I guess it was good because now Marty is our first movie."

Chalamet and Safdie first met at a party in New York in 2017, the year the actor shot to fame with Call Me By Your Name.

The same year the branded film was canned, Safdie read the memoir of table tennis champion Marty Reisman and felt compelled to make a movie inspired by it, with Chalamet as the lead.

He brought the idea to the Wonka star in 2018, and the actor immediately started taking ping-pong lessons to ensure he was ready when the film eventually went into production in 2024.

Elsewhere in the interview, Chalamet praised Safdie for giving his actors the confidence to go off-script.

"What I loved about working on Marty with Josh is he is in this level of mastery where he knows he can be totally reliant on improvisational feelings, or naturalism," he shared. "Josh knows if there's too much fidelity to the script, the magic can be lost. So he wants surprise. He wants you to go off script."

The 2026 Academy Awards will take place on 15 March.