Some go to great lengths for their art. Timothée Chalamet has gone to great heights.
This week, he became the first person ever to pop up on top of the Sphere in Las Vegas—the latest in a vast series of stunts undertaken to promote his new movie, Marty Supreme (“an American film that comes out Christmas Day 2025!” he shouts, wearing a custom Givenchy by Sarah Burton quarter zip and pants, in a clip shared on social media), and executed in collaboration with Cash App (he’s a spokesperson).
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Raised 366 feet in the air, with the Sphere’s 1.2 million LED pucks coordinated to transform it into a ginormous orange ping-pong ball, Chalamet yells and whoops. Then the camera (affixed to a drone) pans out, and the two-time Oscar nominee starts to shrink—a wedding-cake topper turned ant.
The character he plays in Marty Supreme has no desire to feel small in the universe, but Chalamet has been dreaming of the Sphere-as-canvas since he was in production on Wonka, which came out in 2023. (Picture a giant bonbon.) He revived conversations as he was preparing to promote Dune. Neither collaboration quite fruitionized, as Chalamet might put it. Still, he remained in touch with the space’s executives.
“We’re a fan of his,” says Carolyn Blackwood, head of Sphere Studios. “So it’s super organic to be having discussions—big and small—about things we can do with him. And obviously, this film in particular is very special to him.”
Indeed. Since Marty Supreme’s premiere at the New York Film Festival in September, Chalamet has been on a promotional tear, designing and selling custom merch, hosting screenings, blanketing his social media with exhortations to DREAM BIG, sitting down with late-night hosts and YouTube stars, weaponizing the mere notion of a Zoom meeting, renting a blimp, rapping, and appearing on the cover of this magazine, trumpeting his faith in the project.
“You don’t want to risk being too declarative,” he told Vogue. “But I also don’t want to look back on life and things I’ve put out and go, ‘Oh, little old me. Hey, see the movie if you want. It is what it is.’ No. At worst, you’ve rubbed people the wrong way. And at best, someone will get pulled in and go, ‘Hey, this guy really thinks this thing’s worthy.’”
But even he—conqueror of the modern press tour, unabashed striver—never envisioned getting up there. That was Sphere’s idea. “We went to his camp and said, ‘What do you think?’” Blackwood says. “He was incredibly excited about it, and then we had to pull it off.” That meant coordinating schedules, mechanics, equipment, and logistics—plus, having “more than one conversation with risk management,” Blackwood says.
Because there is no escalator to the top of the dome, Chalamet would have to summit a maze of catwalks and gangplanks in full protective gear. “You have to have a certain degree of athleticism, and it’s not for the faint of heart,” Blackwood notes. “He was game for all of it.” In photos from the trek up, Chalamet can be seen in a harness and helmet. He looks mostly elated, with the barest hint of total terror.
“He was 100% hands-on,” Blackwood says. “He is very, very singular in his attention span and what he is looking to do. He was hyper-focused on all aspects of the execution, down to the final edit. Every single piece about this—the design, the color, the visual effects, how we were doing it, the cut that we used—it’s all Timothée.”
In keeping with Marty Supreme’s tachycardiac tempo and its titular character’s maniacal hustle, Chalamet was adamant that the execution not feel too polished. He wanted it lo-fi, unvarnished, and a little nerve-racking. In the final clip, “it almost feels like he climbed up there himself,” a representative for Chalamet points out. (But of course. How else does a star get to the top?)
“It feels great to be on top of the Sphere,” Chalamet reflects in a behind-the-scenes video shared exclusively with Vogue. “Hopefully it’s metaphorical in relation to the box office. And even if it’s not, on the day of my death, an image of this will be carved into my gravestone.”
See the full video below: