- "Bones and All" director Luca Guadagnino said he "immediately" knew he would cast Timothée Chalamet.
- Chalamet previously starred in Guadagnino's hit film, "Call Me By Your Name."
"Bones and All" director Luca Guadagnino admitted he knew he was going to cast Timothée Chalamet in his new film from the beginning.
Chalamet rose to stardom after appearing in Guadagnino's 2017 hit film "Call Me By Your Name." Now the actor and director have teamed up again for "Bones and All," a film based on a 2015 novel of the same name about a cannibal named Maren, played by Taylor Russell, who goes on a journey of discovery.
During a red-carpet appearance for "Bones and All" at the London Film Festival on Saturday, Guadagnino told Insider that he "immediately" knew he would cast Chalamet as Lee, another cannibal who accompanies Maren on her journey and falls in love with her.
"I read the script and I was halfway through it and I felt Lee come into the page and I said 'That's Timothee,'" the 51-year-old director said.
David Kajganich, the writer and producer of the upcoming movie, told Insider that he wasn't sure Lee would be played by Chalamet until Guadagnino got involved with the movie.
"I try to not write with anyone in mind but as soon as Luca was involved he said 'I know who to go to first,'" Kajganich said. "When we make a film, Luca and I together, we work with the actors very closely once they're in place. We go through the scripts and make little tweaks for them. So we started to swing it towards Timmy's direction and Taylor's direction."
He added: "I wouldn't have dared dreaming [for that] early on."
Guadagnino had praised Chalamet's acting journey during a recent interview with Vanity Fair.
"I think that when we did 'Call Me by Your Name,' I think Timothée was almost like a kamikaze. He was ready to explode and he was ready to go in every direction, with a very strong sense of drive," Guadagnino said. "When we did 'Bones and All,' I think the intuition was there, but at the same time, he brought to the table a lot of wonderful ideas and a lot of complexity that added up to what was already there on the page."
He continued: "You could see, four years apart, how the boy became the man and how the intuition became the intellect—but at the same time, how he was very happy and eager to be seen by the camera in a way that was completely free, despite him being a global star."
"Bones and All" premieres in theatres on November 23.