{"id":168205,"date":"2025-12-04T19:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T19:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/168205\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T19:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T19:06:06","slug":"john-popper-developed-timothee-chalamet-phobia-after-watching-dune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/168205\/","title":{"rendered":"John Popper Developed “Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet Phobia” After Watching Dune"},"content":{"rendered":"

COVID was a bad time for most of Earth. Yet without mitigating the very real suffering experienced planet-wide, John Popper of Blues Traveler<\/a> had an especially peculiar experience during the pandemic. And by peculiar, I mean he developed a phobia of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell asleep to [2021\u2019s] Dune and I kept having these fever dreams that Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet was a terminator coming to kill me,\u201d Popper recounted in an interview with Rolling Stone<\/a>. \u201cAnd I would shoot him 100 times and he just kept coming back, and he was unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are so many questions I\u2019m not actually sure where to begin. At what exact moment did Popper actually fall asleep? Because at most, the first Dune sees Chalamet\u2019s Paul Atreides fluctuate between scared little boy and junior badass-in-training. Beyond that, did Popper eat something spicy to somehow facilitate these dreams? And when he says \u201cterminator,\u201d did he imagine Chalamet\u2019s body on a T-800 skeleton? And, lastly, if this Dune gave him nightmares, should he even attempt David Lynch\u2019s bonkers 1984 version?<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n

This revelation came during Popper\u2019s decidedly personal interview with Rolling Stone. He also discussed almost dying in 2025 following a botched surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome; how he met his new wife, Sherri \u201cGidget\u201d Popper at a nudist colony in 2003; his continued sober journey; why Bob Dylan is rock\u2019s worst harmonica player; and 2026 tour plans with Gin Blossoms and Spin Doctors. (Those bands previously played together in 2023 during a \u201990s rock-themed party cruise<\/a>.) Check out the full interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, and don\u2019t worry too much about Popper\u2019s bruised psyche. He eventually found a salve to turn Chalamet from a murderous terminator back into America\u2019s brightest young star.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave me a fear of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet until I saw A Complete Unknown,\u201d Popper said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COVID was a bad time for most of Earth. Yet without mitigating the very real suffering experienced planet-wide,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-168205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}