In his opening monologue at the Academy Awards on Monday, host Conan O'Brien made quite a few jokes, some that did not go down well and others that the intended audience took sportingly. Take Timothée Chalamet, for example. The actor had a big smile as O'Brien made a joke about his recent comments about working in opera and ballet.

"Security is extremely tight tonight," said O'Brien. Then, looking at Chalamet, he went on to add, "I'm told there's concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities. They're just mad you left out jazz."

The joke had the audience in splits, as opposed to some of O'Brien's other attempts at eliciting laughter.

Chalamet attended the Oscars 2026 as he earned a Best Actor nomination for his performance in Marty Supreme. He lost the award to Sinners star Michael B Jordan. Interestingly, some have even argued that the so-called Oscar snub has to do with Chalamet's comments about ballet and opera.

Why Conan O'Brien joked about Timothée Chalamet at the Oscars?

To understand the joke, we have to go back to a recent CNN and Variety town hall, where Chalamet expressed his disinterest in ballet and opera while speaking to his Interstellar co-star Matthew McConaughey. "I don't want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.' All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there," the actor said.

He immediately realised that that comments might court controversy while candidly admitting, "I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason."

Opera and ballet organisers around the world have responded to Chalamet's comments with simple videos, showing of the number of viewers they have on Instagram. Many theatres even offered tickets to their performing art events at discounted prices, with the tickets featuring Chalamet as a code.

Meanwhile, Katherine LaNasa, known for her role in The Pitt, shared a video where she can be seen performing ballet.