Ahead of Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the Super Bowl Half-Time Show on Sunday (February 9), the Grammy winner filmed a conversation between himself and Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet.
The pair share a Bob Dylan connection, as Chalamet plays the singer in biopic A Complete Unknown, while Lamar’s mega-hit ‘Not Like Us’ samples a Ray Charles song that Dylan sampled in his track ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’.
In a three-and-a-half-minute clip shared by The NFL on X (formerly Twitter), the actor enthused about the rapper’s success, and professed to being an admirer of his work. “Just being a fan of your music forever and knowing like, look where you’re at now, man” he said. “It’s just crazy, Super Bowl halftime show. And you just keep climbing, bro. It’s like, amazing”.
During the conversation, both men also shared their creative processes. Chalamet said: “The thing about acting is, if you don’t have an audience, it’s just a form of insanity. And you’re just, what are you doing?… So I definitely try to warm up and then, you know, lose that self-consciousness when you finally get back out there. But that takes time.”
He continued: “I always try to embrace failure — you were talking about that the other day — the most important part of a bad day is the way you leave it. If you can leave a bad take or a bad day with a positive attitude, then you’ve got nothing to fear”.
Kendrick Lamar and Timothée Chalamet’s exclusive interview ahead of #AppleMusicHalftime. #SBLIX@KendrickLamar @pglang @AppleMusic pic.twitter.com/F1SQniZdgm
— NFL (@NFL) February 7, 2025
Lamar discussed his approach to songwriting, saying: “I have to keep the pen moving. It’s my form of sanity… And it also has given me the opportunity to learn myself, you know, find out who I am.”
He also talked about the need “to sit and go through the emotions and be vulnerable about it”, adding: “A lot of these records I write, man, a lot of stuff I probably would have never expressed or even known about myself if it wasn’t for an instrumental behind it”.
Last month, Lamar confirmed that SZA would join him as a special guest for his Super Bowl performance in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Timothée Chalamet recently revealed he put on 20 pounds to play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.