Timothée Chalamet in The King - ELLE Online October 2019

With his bowl cut that divided the internet, Timothée Chalamet proved himself to be one of an elite set of actors who are willing to look weird for their craft. But his transformation into medieval royalty for Netflix's The King went beyond sacrificing his locks.

To play the wayward boy king Henry V, your boyfriend not only spent time with a dialect coach to perfect his English accent, but he also went through a gruelling physical regimen that saw him working out, learning how to ride a horse, learning how to ride a horse while holding a sword, and memorising fight choreography, even for scenes that didn't make the final edit (fingers crossed for a director's cut).

"It was more about hitting the gym rather than trying to put on weight to try to get the physicality of it right," Chalamet told ELLE at the Sydney premiere of The King, which also stars Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson, Ben Mendelsohn and Lily-Rose Depp.

The period piece, directed and co-written by Australian David Michôd and his long-time pal Edgerton, has been in the works for decades.

"I played Timmy's character on stage when I was 25 and 26," Edgerton explained. "The story is in my bones; it's been in my heart for a long time, and then it came to a point where, in terms of Hollywood, I could push my own agenda and that's when I went to David and said, 'What if we made this into a movie?' and thankfully he said yes."

"We put Shakespeare aside really early and then did a deep-dive into the research and then just made stuff up," Michôd added, laughing. "I think the story of Henry V is not one that would immediately lend itself to a modern telling because it's a story of English nationalism, but we found a way in that felt very appropriate and contemporary about the machine of power and how it consumes people."

The result is more entertaining than your high school Shakespeare studies (in part because everyone in this film is beautiful). Yes, it's heavy on the war and violence, but moments of hilarity—Pattinson as a French dauphin who can't stop laughing as he hurls childish insults at Henry V; Edgerton as Falstaff, who hits the wine a little too hard; and Chalamet's own savage one-liners—prevent it from becoming a humourless slog. There are also touching moments of friendship, family, loss and romance: in all, it's a rollercoaster.

So how did Lil Timmy Tim come on board?

"I had the extraordinary experience of seeing Call Me By Your Name right at the time we were looking for someone," Michôd explained. "That movie is amazing, and when I was watching it, I was watching the version of The King I wanted to make: a true, beautiful boy king who becomes a tyrant."

But for Chalamet, the role wasn't love at first sight. "I wanted to do something that felt very challenging, and I wanted to work with David Michôd and Robert Pattinson, who was already signed up to be part of this, but I couldn't see myself in it," he said, "but David made it clear we weren't trying to one-up Kenneth Branagh or Laurence Olivier, because we would have no shot at doing that. We were trying to do something new - not contemporary, but a new searing portrait of a young man who finds himself in a circumstance he can't really deal with, and that was exciting to me."

"Timmy is a far more mature actor than I was when I played Henry," Edgerton said. "He's only 23 and he's doing all these incredible things on a world stage. When I was his age, everything I did was so in the basement, so underground, and I hate to look back on it because I don't think there was any semblance of understanding. He's put it together at a young age in a way that I never could have."

In person, normality has been restored to Chalamet's hair: his casual waves are cast in a halo of afternoon light outside the Randwick Ritz, refusing to frizz in the Australian heat. To resist the impulse to reach out and pull on a curl takes superhuman effort. And despite the transformation into the king, the modesty Chalamet has become famous for is also back for good.

"The idea was never that Hal [aka Henry V] kicks ass, but that Hal just survives the battle [of Agincourt]. The act of valliance is in him showing up." He laughed and gestured to himself, adding, "it wouldn't have been believable anyway, me getting into a scrum and kicking ass."

This story originally appeared on elle.com.au in October 2019. Images: Netflix.