In a recent post on X, Bob Dylan made it clear that he supports Timothée Chalamet in his role in James Mangold’s upcoming biopic A complete unknown. The legendary singer-songwriter wrote that Chalamet “is a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’ll be as believable as I am.” And on Monday, the eve of the film’s LA premiere, Chalamet told Deadline that it reading Dylan’s words felt “really, really validating.”

As for what else Dylan thinks of the project as a whole, Chalamet said: “It’s hard to say. He is a mysterious, elusive figure. So I thought if he or his team didn’t want me to be there, I would have known. But I also didn’t really know how involved he would be.”

While writer-director Mangold confirmed to Deadline that Dylan has not yet seen the film, Chalamet noted that the musician “engaged creatively with Mangold, which was great, he contributed to the script,” but also that The project was never intended to accurately recreate Dylan. “It’s an interpretation,” he said. “That was a fable. This was not intended to be a factual replication of the situation on Wikipedia. Otherwise, you can just watch the existing footage.”

A complete unknown covers Dylan’s early introduction to folk music to the point where he picked up an electric guitar and turned to rock. Mangold and his co-writer Jay Cocks based the screenplay on the 2015 book Dylan goes electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the night that divided the sixtiesby Elijah Wald and Edward Norton starring as Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as Dylan’s friend Sylvie (a version of Suze Rotolo, renamed at Dylan’s request).

Chalamet prepared for his role for five years, learning the guitar and playing all the songs in the film himself. When asked if he had thought about writing or performing music in the future, he said: “I’ve never done that seriously before , but there’s no such thing as serious writing.”