Looking Back with Pauline Chalamet

Paris is going through a cold spell, and Pauline Chalamet is one minute late for our call. I can see the city behind her as she holds up the knit-covered hot water bottle in her hands—the reason for her (slight) tardiness. "This is a wacked out December cold," she says. It's just before the holidays and Chalamet has just returned home on the long flight from Los Angeles. Between running her production company, Gummy Films, and the recent release of the second season of The Sex Lives of College Girls—plus a number of projects on the side—she's had a busy 2022. "Given that there are two weeks left in the year, I'm going to say my plan for this year is to relax as much as possible," she says. But as far as 2023 goes, she has much more in mind. "I'm eager to dig my heels in and keep working," she tells me.

From the sound of it, Chalamet has always been comfortable with a frighteningly packed schedule. She grew up in New York City, where she attended La Guardia High School, one of the city's most well known public schools for performing artists, majoring in dance first and switching to theater her sophomore year. As a young ballerina she also attended the School of American Ballet down the street at Lincoln Center. "There is a literal two-block radius at 65th and Amsterdam," she says, "where I spent ten years of my life. When I go back to those cross streets a part of me is like, 'Oh my God, I'm in the Matrix. Nothing has changed.'" But it's interesting, she reflects, because "there are things that are innate to having grown up there that I'm really grateful for." She describes New York City's influence as "a way of being, a sort of tenacity and desire to push through and persevere." She adds, "I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else."

The tenacity and perseverance are obvious—but when we discuss her acting career, Chalamet says she was very shy about Hollywood and the film industry early on. "I felt like something was wrong with me because I didn't have that feeling of I have to live and breathe this or I will die." Instead, her focus has ebbed and flowed: At times she's dedicated more to acting and film, at others less. As her interests change, her focus shifts too. Her strength seems to lie in an ability to, as she puts it, roll with it. "Sometimes the plans just don't matter as much," she says. "And then it's like, 'OK, well this happened instead. Let's roll with this punch.'"

After college at Bard, where she double majored in political studies and experimental theater, she was working for an NGO called the International Crisis Group under the direction of their general counsel, a woman named Carole Corcoran whom Chalamet says was particularly influential in her life. "One day she pulled me into her office and was like, 'So you want to be a lawyer?' And I was like, 'Yeah.' And she was like, 'OK, my advice to you is to just go do something else for a year before you apply to law school, because I think you might want to do something else.'" It was about that time, in 2014, that Chalamet moved to Paris. "My life kind of made itself here," she says. And now, "I just feel very comfortable."

Since 2014, a lot has changed for Chalamet. When she first moved she was working odd jobs—working in cafes, babysitting, copyediting—to make ends meet and then pursuing each of her creative passions here and there when she found the time and energy. She describes it as a time when she was watering each of her interests (like writing, acting, theater, and film) an equal amount. But then, after performing in a play in Paris, she realized, "Oh, this is what I want to be doing."

The daughter of a French journalist father and a Broadway performer mother, Chalamet was raised in the infamous performing artists' residence Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen; she has been close to the arts her entire life. Everything she's worked on has had some creative element, she says, but the major connecting thread in her pursuits is curiosity. "I like learning—I think I'm pretty curious. But I think it's about just living experiences. Sometimes [they happen] in your backyard."

Returning for another season of Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble's HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls was, Chalamet says, a particularly unique experience in her acting career, which otherwise has taken place mostly in French projects. "I felt really lucky to be able to step back into a character's shoes," she explains. "That was a really awesome experience and unlike anything I'd ever lived before. It's my first real foray into the television world and learning how these sets are run differently. It's really a writer's medium, and it's been an experience unlike any I've ever had. For that I feel very grateful." She describes Kaling as a powerhouse—someone who "really knows what she wants," and the team of writers as "just what you'd imagine writers to be like. It's just really impressive to be around that."

For fans of the show, there is a bit of the same kind of earnestness—even nerdiness—in Chalamet’s demeanor as her character Kimberly's. But Chalamet strikes me as ultra confident, self-assured, and introspective. This might stem from her lifelong habit of personal recordkeeping. "I've kept a journal since I was in fourth grade. It's been a major throughline in my life, the importance of reflecting thoughts and the evolution of what that means. Sometimes I feel like I've been the same person for fifteen years, but I'll go back and read like March 7, 2008, and it's like, 'Fuck this whole world this shit is stupid!' and that’s it. And I have no idea what I'm talking about. Now I think I would be a little more elaborate," she laughs. She says the key to keeping a journal is to withhold judgment. For Chalamet, this means not glancing back at what she's read for a full year after writing it. "In December of each year I'll go back and read the year before—I won't let myself do it before," she explains. "Otherwise it's too easy to judge yourself and question why you're writing about something. But in the moment, that's what was coming out."

The Sex Lives of College Girls is now streaming on HBO Max.

As a nonprofit arts and culture publication dedicated to educating, inspiring, and uplifting creatives, Cero Magazine depends on your donations to create stories like these. Please support our work here.