Is Timothée Chalamet as good at pingpong as his character in 'Marty Supreme'?

First hint that idiosyncratic is superior astir pingpong: They telephone it array tennis.

Second clue: They bring their ain paddle.

Timothée Chalamet dropped a 3rd hint connected movie sets each implicit the globe. To hole for his relation successful the delightfully frenetic “Marty Supreme,” the two-time Oscar nominee traveled for years with a array successful tow, grooming and presumably enjoying the athletics astatine the halfway of the existent vacation play hit.

Director Josh Safdie enlisted the husband-and-wife table-tennis teaching tandem of Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang — a erstwhile U.S. Olympian — to elevate Chalamet’s crippled arsenic good arsenic service arsenic method advisors connected set.

But Chalamet was already playing astir good capable to emulate a satellite champion connected screen. He’d taken lessons and done his homework — mounting up a array successful the surviving country of his New York flat and playing passim the pandemic.

“Everything I was moving on, it was this secret,” Chalamet told the Hollywood Reporter. “I had a array successful London portion I was making ‘Wonka.’ On ‘Dune: Part Two,’ I had a array successful Budapest [and] Jordan. I had a array successful Abu Dhabi. I had a array astatine the Cannes Film Festival for ‘The French Dispatch.’”

It seems implausible that Chalamet was immersed successful array tennis portion besides learning to sing and play guitar for the relation of Bob Dylan successful “A Complete Unknown.”

“If anyone thinks this is cap, arsenic the kids accidental — if anyone thinks this is made up — this is each documented, and it’ll beryllium enactment out,” helium said. “These were the 2 spoiled projects wherever I got years to enactment connected them. This is the truth. I was moving connected some these things concurrently.”

Wherever Chalamet recovered the time, Schaaf was impressed by the result.

“He was singularly dedicated to getting this to beryllium the aforesaid prime arsenic the remainder of the movie,” Schaaf told the Hollywood Reporter.

Eschewing a stunt treble for the array tennis scenes was a constituent of pridefulness for Chalamet. The lone concession to modern moviemaking was that respective of the longer sequences during games were choreographed without a ball, which was added aboriginal via computer-generated imagery (CGI).

“We realized it had to beryllium scripted to beryllium capable to movie it,” Schaaf told the Washington Post. “And due to the fact that it was scripted, we had to signifier it archetypal with a existent ball. He had to recognize the carnal layout of the point: Where does helium person to go? When does helium person to spell there? When you aboriginal connected bash [visual effects] and enactment the shot successful there, it’s captious that the subordinate goes to the close place.”

Schaaf said astir 60 points were scripted.

“We needed a batch of rehearsal, and I was amazed,” helium said. “Timothée coiled up getting a amended consciousness for it than astir nonrecreational players due to the fact that nonrecreational players instrumentality the cue from the ball. You instrumentality the shot away, they each were similar ‘What is the timing?’

“Of course, they person a bully consciousness of timing and past they learned it quickly. But Timothée was close determination connected apical of it.”

The on-screen rival of Chalamet’s character, Marty Mauser, is Koto Endo, portrayed by real-life Japanese array tennis champion Koto Kawaguchi. Their dynamic approximated the real-life rivalry betwixt 1950s U.S. champion Marty Reisman and Japan’s Hiroji Satoh.

In her reappraisal of “Marty Supreme,” Times movie professional Amy Nicholson noted that well-struck pingpong balls question up to 70 mph.

“Set successful 1952 New York, this deranged caper races aft a money-grubbing array tennis hustler (he prefers ‘professional athlete’) who argues similar helium plays, swatting distant protests and annoying his adversaries to exhaustion,” she wrote.

Nicholson offers that Reisman would beryllium pleased by the movie, “which time-travels audiences backmost 7 decades to erstwhile American array tennis players were definite agleam days were ahead.

“As an athlete, Chalamet seems to person lost musculus for the role. Yet arsenic comic arsenic it is to spot a feline this scrawny transportation himself similar Hercules, helium leaps and strikes with conviction.”

Nothing gives an histrion — oregon an jock — self-assurance similar practice, repetitions and rehearsals. Chalamet’s paddle show is proof.