That Christopher Nolan and Chalamet Interstellar moment keeps popping up because it’s ridiculously funny and very Nolan. Timothée Chalamet told the tale with a great deal of self-awareness. “When I got the part, I Googled the project, and the original story was about a father and his son, so I thought, ‘Oh, man. I made it!“
Until the reality check: “Never believe what you read online,” Nolan said.
Interstellar’s heart ultimately centered on parental love
What Timothée didn’t know back then, and what he’s learned to laugh about since, was that the script had changed. Jonathan Nolan’s initial draft had Murph as a boy, a draft written when Steven Spielberg was still attached. But Christopher Nolan reworked the character as a daughter, based on his own child. And suddenly the entire focus of the movie had changed. Chalamet famously recited the teaser monologue word-for-word to prove his fandom. This is the speech Matthew McConaughey gives in the very first Interstellar trailer:
“We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible… We stepped out of our solar system into the great unknown… But we lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just forgotten that we are still pioneers and we’ve barely begun and that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.”
Mackenzie Foy and Jessica Chastain became the emotional center of the film, and Timothée became the human Tom, the everyman who’s intentionally kept out of the space adventure.
But the conversation only gets better from there, especially because Timothée is a true fan. In the same conversation, he even recites the Interstellar teaser speech verbatim and then asks Nolan about the recording of that. The speech was filmed early on, almost like a diary entry, to make the scratchy sincerity of McConaughey’s voice so intimate that fans still go around quoting the dialogue today.
As he says, “How insane is my career right now?” He is not bragging; he is astonished. He is not the kid in the background on a Nolan shoot anymore; he is the lead actor in Dune and Wonka, sitting beside the director like a peer.
But even that is not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is that, as always, Nolan cuts through the myth-making and tells us that scripts change, the internet is a liar, and no matter how advanced the science gets, the truth is that Interstellar is powered by a parent’s love and the guilt of leaving.
