Timothée Chalamet took vocal lessons in order to play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, and his vocal coach, Eric Vetro, is revealing what it took to get him there.
Vetro, who also worked with Austin Butler for Elvis, tells Rolling Stone that the key was figuring out, “what is the essence of this person? What makes their voice stand out?”
“In Timothée Chalamet’s case, he’s probably the definition of charismatic. I swear he has some kind of energy field around him,” he says. “When he walks in the room, everything just changes … I guess you would say it’s that elusive It factor that everyone always talks about, but his wattage is just off the charts.”
Vetro notes that as they continued to work on the character, “I would see Timmy morphing into Bob more and more. Then he started, when he would come in, he would just start talking like Bob and there was no need to acknowledge it — it would just happen very naturally.”
“I remember the first day he walked in with a guitar and he had the harmonica holder around his neck. And I was struck by how natural it all looked,” Vetro shares. “It looked like he had been doing this forever. Like it would with Bob Dylan.”
And with A Complete Unknown opening Dec. 25, Vetro is now tackling another iconic rocker, working with Jeremy Allen White on his portrayal of Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Us From Nowhere.
“It’s going absolutely great. He’s fantastic. I love working with him and he’s really capturing it beautifully,” Vetro says. “That’s another case where we have to work on getting a safe rasp—you don’t want to actually damage your voice to get that sound.”