Timothée Chalamet Says His 'Dune' Co-Star Zendaya Is "Mega-Inspiring"

Timothée Chalamet is just like us — well, besides the Oscar nomination and Kylie Jenner boyfriend status. But even so, he just proved his relatability in a new interview with GQ, in which he said what we're all thinking: Zendaya is "mega-inspiring."

“It was so incredibly valuable to spend so much time with Zendaya and her assistant, Darnell, and when Tom would come to set too,” he said of working with the star on the set of Dune: Part One and Part Two. “They’re level. They’re good Hollywood. They’re good-energy Hollywood."

“Look at Zendaya,” he added. “Just how much she’s able to achieve while also sort of letting everything roll off her back is mega-inspiring. She’s just doing.”

Dune writer and director Denis Villeneuve also spoke to the publication, saying that Chalamet was the "younger actor" on the set of Part One compared to industry veterans like Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, and Oscar Isaac. Now, Villeneuve explained that Chalamet has become an equal and a friend to his older cast mates. “In Part One, Timothée was a little puppy with big dogs," the director said. "The younger actor with the older mentors. In Part Two, he was with friends.”

Chalamet has also grown close with his other Part Two co-stars, Austin Butler and Florence Pugh (the two also appeared together in Greta Gerwig's Little Women). "I feel like I’m creating a community for myself of people who care about the right things," he said.

He also commended Butler for his dedication to the work. Chalamet told GQ that on day one of the read-through, the Elvis star had already traded in his now infamous put-on Memphis twang for a Stellan Skarsgård-inspired voice (Butler plays the heir to Skarsgård’s character Baron Harkonnen).

"I can’t overstate how inspiring it was to me personally.” Chalamet gushed. "He takes the work incredibly seriously. And I feel like I hadn’t seen that among someone my age, whether it was in drama school or on set, that did take the work that seriously but then after ‘cut’ wasn’t, you know, in some show of how seriously they took it — and instead is this tremendously affable, wonderful man.”