Doja Cat Walks Back Timothée Chalamet Takedown Amid Opera Comments Backlash

The Grammy winner has admitted she was "virtue signalling" when she spoke out about the recent controversy surrounding Timothée.

Doja Cat is backtracking after weighing in on the recent discourse surrounding Timothée Chalamet.

Over the weekend, Doja had a few things to get off her chest about viral comments made by the Marty Supreme actor last week, declaring that “no one cares” about opera and ballet anymore.

Calling the Oscar nominee out by name in a now-deleted Instagram post, the rapper hit back: “The dancers care, the singers care, the audience cares. There’s still an audience. People give a fuck. You show up in a nice outfit. You sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. That’s the usual etiquette around those things. Maybe learn something from that.”

However, in a new TikTok shared on Tuesday, Doja made something of a u-turn on her comments, explaining that she recorded her previous video “in the heat of the moment”.

The Paint The Town Red musician explained that she probably isn’t the most qualified person to unpack Timothée’s controversial comments about the arts, because she’s never actually been to the ballet or seen an opera.

“I am going to come out and say that I know nothing about opera. I know nothing about ballet,” the Grammy winner confessed.

Doja explained that she had a change of heart after watching a TikTok video of an unnamed man who is “well-versed in opera”, who broke down Timothée’s comments in a way that made her adjust her own opinion.

“I took it upon myself yesterday to kind of give it to the man because there is a culture based around outrage and things like that and people want to feel like they’re part of something. It’s a need to connect, whether good or bad,” she added.

She also admitted she made her video to try to “seem sincere” to her followers.

“What I was doing yesterday was virtue signalling because I wanted to connect and I knew that Timothée’s goof-up was something that I could leverage in order for people to connect with me and fuck with me,” Doja claimed. “And it’s easy. It’s a modern way to garner clicks, likes, approval, and all kinds of things like that from people. And so I did that yesterday, and I didn’t really think about why I was doing it.”

She added: “I wanted to feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to be patted on the back the way everybody else is patting each other on the back in the comments sections. And I wanted to look like a hero, and that’s what happened.”

@dojacat ♬ original sound - Doja Cat

Timothée’s controversial remarks happened during a recent CNN and Variety town hall event in Texas.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this anymore,’” the Oscar nominee told Matthew McConaughey, during a discussion about actors encouraging film fans to watch movies at the cinema.

He quickly added: “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”

Since then, everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to Jamie Lee Curtis and Andrea Bocelli has responded to these less-than-favourable comments about the arts.

© HuffPost