{"id":478633,"date":"2026-02-19T21:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T21:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/478633\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T21:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T21:54:07","slug":"matthew-mcconaughey-timothee-chalamet-on-ai-actors-at-the-oscars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/478633\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew McConaughey, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet on AI Actors at the Oscars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMatthew McConaughey<\/a> and Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet are telling young people to brace themselves and lead the entertainment industry through the rise of AI.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring Variety and CNN\u2019s town hall event<\/a> at the University of Texas at Austin, which reunited the \u201cDallas Buyers Club\u201d Oscar winner with his \u201cInterstellar\u201d co-star Chalamet, McConaughey explained the thought process behind his recent move to trademark his catchphrase<\/a> from \u201cDazed and Confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s coming. It\u2019s already here,\u201d he said, responding to a student\u2019s question about AI. \u201cDon\u2019t deny it. It\u2019s not going to be enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea that, \u2018No, this is wrong.\u2019 It\u2019s not gonna last. There\u2019s too much money to be made, and it\u2019s too productive. So I say: Own yourself. Voice, likeness, et cetera. Trademark it. Whatever you gotta do, so when it comes, no one can steal you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA CNN & Variety Town Hall Event: Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey\u201d airs Saturday, February 21 at 7 p.m. on CNN and streams on the CNN app.\u00a0Chalamet and McConaughey reunited to discuss the latter\u2019s performance in \u201cMarty Supreme<\/a>,\u201d for which he is nominated in the best actor Oscar category.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Chalamet during the town hall, McConaughey gave an example of the AI scenarios he imagines are coming in the future. \u201cThey gotta come to you and go, \u2018Timoth\u00e9e, I\u2019d like you to be at my 50th birthday party in five months, and I\u2019m gonna be in the Bahamas. I know you can\u2019t be there in person, but I\u2019m gonna halo you in and I want you as your character in \u201cMarty Supreme,\u201d\u2018\u201d he said. \u201cThey can do that, but they\u2019re gonna have to come to you to go, \u2018Can I?\u2019 Or they\u2019re going to be in breach. And you\u2019ll have the chance to be your own agency and go, \u2018Yeah, for this amount.\u2019 Or, \u2018No.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcConaughey also mused on the idea of AI \u201creplacing\u201d actors \u2014 and how the technology might factor into awards conversations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s damn sure going to infiltrate our category. Does it become another category? Will we be, in five years, having \u2018the best AI film\u2019? \u2018The best AI actor?’\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe. I think that might be the thing; it becomes another category. It\u2019s gonna be in front of us in ways that we don\u2019t even see. It\u2019s going to get so good we\u2019re not going to know the difference. That\u2019s one of the big questions right now: the question of reality. It\u2019s more hazy than ever \u2014 in a very exciting way, I think, but also a scary way. Prep for it. Own your own lane, so you at least have agency when it starts to trespass.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChalamet also weighed in, saying to the college students in the audience that Gen Z will bear the brunt of teaching society how to live with AI, though older generations must support them in that.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to be all of our war to wage \u2014\u00a0sounds confrontational, I don\u2019t mean to say it like that \u2014 but it\u2019s a dual responsibility,\u201d Chalamet said. \u201cUnfortunately for your generation, I think it\u2019s going to be you guys that figure out how to integrate it. There\u2019s a huge [responsibility for] people that are positions of power now, like myself, like Matthew, to safekeep so that doors stay open. Some of the roles I got that helped kickstart my career, I wouldn\u2019t even know if they\u2019re available today.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a level of fatalism I feel,\u201d Chalamet continued. \u201cIt will be on your generation, and mine to an extent, to know how to ethically integrate it, if at all, or do away with it. But the fatalist in me feels like this stuff is coming. And the dreamer in me wants to go, \u2018Hey, if it enables a 19-year-old to produce something they couldn\u2019t otherwise because there\u2019s gatekeepers standing in the way, then [good].\u2019 But ultimately, it\u2019s not my place to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHearkening back to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, Chalamet said, \u201cIn the last Screen Actors Guild negotiation that Fran Drescher tried to head off with the studios, it was a dicey. They didn\u2019t really get the protections for the Screen Actors Guild that she was after. [AI is] a hard thing to advocate against. It would be like how [silent era filmmakers] said, \u2018No, sound is fucked up, we can\u2019t do that.\u2019 Or when black-and-white went to color. \u2018No, color\u2019s fucked up.\u2019 That would be [the studios\u2019] argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChalamet concluded that though his current focus is on preparing for the potential harms of AI, he believes the industry will find a healthy way to embrace it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanna keep the doors open for you guys. But someone\u2019s gonna figure out how to do it all at once,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m fiercely protective of actors and artists in this industry. And equally, whatever tide is coming, it\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSee a clip of McConaughey and Chalamet\u2019s conversation about AI below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew McConaughey and Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet are telling young people to brace themselves and lead the entertainment industry through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,56102,10633,57100],"class_list":{"0":"post-478633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-marty-supreme","11":"tag-matthew-mcconaughey","12":"tag-timothee-chalamet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}