Everyone loves 21-year-old actor Timothée Chalamet, and it’s easy to see why. He’s good-looking. He’s got great hair. He turned in a Gotham Award-winning performance in the sure-to-be-Oscar-nominated film, Call Me By Your Name, where he portrays a 17-year-old boy in the midst of a sexual awakening via none other than Armie Hammer. And he was even vaguely likeable in Lady Bird, now the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes of all-time, playing the irresistibly enigmatic love interest of Saoirse Ronan. Lest we forget, he also has a cool French name! With an accent mark!
Indeed, it would appear that Chalamet is on top of the world. That nothing can stand in his way from breaking out as Hollywood’s next big thing. That he is on one of those once-in-a-generation career trajectories that expertly balance artful stuff with more traditional popcorn fare.
Except, well, there’s this: he was a total fucking dick on Homeland that one time.
What, you don’t remember? Allow us to refresh your memory.
Now do you remember?!?!
Ah, yes. It’s all coming back to you. Season 2. Dana Brody’s wavy brown locks. Her innocent schoolgirl crush. The self-assured son of the Vice President with a charming smile: Finn Walden. It was young love, in the key of “prestige drama about a bipolar CIA agent who tries to stop a terrorist attack on U.S. soil,” otherwise known as C minor. The somewhat less tense spot in an otherwise uber-tense season of television. He said all the right things; had all the right hair. Presumably, he kissed okay, too.
But then, while driving Dana, Finn accidentally hit and killed a woman with his car. Chalamet! In the intense period that followed, Finn furiously attempts to keep Dana quiet about the accident. He is, frankly, a total dick about it. Eventually, Dana—sweet, innocent, stubborn Dana, who we never heard of again after, like, season 3!—confesses to her parents and Walden’s their involvement in the accident. And, like the fucking dicks they are, the Waldens pay off the victim’s family in order to keep the incident from going public. All the while, Finn is particularly dickish.
Will viewers of Homeland ever forgive Chalamet for his character’s complete and utter dickishness? Maybe. Maybe not. It probably doesn’t hurt that Finn Walden died in the bomb that went off at CIA HQ in Season 2—and that Chalamet rose, with a solid IMDB credit to his name and still-perfect hair, from his dickish character’s ashes.
And that nobody really gives a shit about season 2 of Homeland, anymore.
