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Timothée Chalamet doppelgänger Matt Mannix says he is looking for a lawyer. The Long Island native and current Manhattan resident is the Chalamet lookalike thousands of people saw get arrested on October 27, 2024, during the Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest held at Washington Square Park in New York City.
“I cannot believe ‘A Timothée Chalamet lookalike got arrested at the Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest’ is a real sentence I can type,” has been a statement seen in almost every single TikTok and Instagram comment section of the video about Mannix being detained by the New York Police Department. Mannix can believe it though, because he experienced it. Since the event concluded, Mannix’s face has circulated the web, with people commenting #FreeTimmy on social media pages covering the arrest. No one knew exactly who he was, his identity not fully reaching the public, but his face has joined the Mount Rushmore of what was supposed to be an unserious local event. The Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest became a cultural moment everyone on the internet was talking about.
Mannix tells Teen Vogue that everything has been surreal for him the last 24 hours. He says his own mother found out about the arrest via social media while he was still inside a cell. Teen Vogue reached out to the NYPD, who said they’d responded to an "unscheduled demonstration" in Washington Square Park and that four people were arrested and later released with a summons. Police did not specify what charges the individuals were arrested under. Mannix says he did not see any of the other arrests during the contest and that he received four individual summons himself, for: two charges of failure to comply with directions from park staff, police officers, or park signs; disorderly conduct; and trespassing.
Now, the 24-year-old is figuring out his next steps, which include upcoming court appearances. And while he didn’t get to see Timothée Chalamet himself — Mannix was being carted off by NYPD at the exact moment Chalamet was making his way through the crowd back to his car — the New Yorker has quickly become synonymous with the infamous event. Below, we caught up with Mannix to ask him about the last 24 hours.
MM: I heard about the contest, a bunch of my friends just kept forwarding it to me. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, but I was like, 'You know what, it'll be funny.' Why not?
MM: So I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't even sure exactly what the whole process was gonna look like. And by the time I showed up, they had started leaving and dispersing. There was still a big crowd there, hanging out, but I never really saw any of the actual official event go down, so I was just kind of hanging there. I didn't even know if there was an official enrollment process or what.
MM: It was definitely really chaotic, but pretty much I'm just hanging out there right around where the arch is, and there's this girl who asked to take my picture. And while she's taking my picture, pretty much this cop ends up putting his hand on my back and pushing me forward. And so I'm like, “Okay, what's going on? I don't know why you're pushing me, but you don't need to put your hands on me.” It was without warning — it wasn't like he was talking to me, he just came in and initiated the interaction by pushing me. So then in the process of me asking why he's pushing me, he just pushes me again with both hands, like really pushes me forward, and then grabs both of my wrists. He holds on to my wrists for about three minutes, and he would not let go.
[Note: a TikTok that Mannix posted shows the aftermath of that alleged interaction, starting with Mannix talking with police officers on the scene, and ending with his arrest.]
Basically, throughout this whole process, I keep asking him, “Am I being detained? Am I being detained? Am I being detained?” And the entire time, he does not answer. So he just keeps deflecting by asking me, “Are you leaving? Are you leaving?” And I don't know how he wants me to leave when he's still gripping onto my wrists. Really doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But I kept being like, “What crime did I commit?” And they never really said why, they just kept saying I failed to disperse, but it was really unclear to me what I needed to disperse for and why they just picked on me randomly. There were a whole lot of people there.
MM: I actually didn't even realize that. That’s so funny, because I, literally, until this moment, did not even realize. I knew he was there, but I didn't realize the timing of it and how close he was when he was walking by, that's actually hilarious. That's really surreal.
MM: They took me straight to the precinct. They threw me into a cell. Yeah, they were really vigorous with how they wanted to search me and everything. And they just were clearly very upset at me. But it was really ridiculous. They told me I was going to be there for 20 to 30 minutes. I ended up being there in the cell for pretty much an hour and a half. And yeah, it was not a fun time, but I'm glad I'm out now.
But also another thing, when I was in the cell, crazily enough, they actually handed me my summons, which was the first time I even knew what [they were charging me with]. And it was only [at] that moment that I knew what the ordinances were. And even then, the guy went to walk out after just giving me the papers, and I'm like, “Okay, why am I still here if you gave me the papers? Aren't I free to go?” And he said, “Oh, the captain or whatever, needs to fill out more paperwork." And so I was like, “Can he do that when I'm not here if this is all I need?” And so thankfully, he went to go talk to them and then they let me out after that. But I was like, ”Who knows how long they were trying to keep me for it after all that?"
MM: I never saw anyone else get arrested. It was just me. I came to the event by myself too.
MM: I have to go to court for them, so we'll see how it ends up being. But there's no like, specific price or anything there that's stated yet, so I don't really know. I've never been arrested before, so I guess I'll have to find out exactly in court.
MM: I actually just ended up texting with him right now, so yeah. I’m just figuring things out. But it's super nice for him to reach out.
MM: The situation, it's absolutely [wild]. To give you some context, literally my mom found out that I was arrested before I even got out of the cell. I had all these missed calls from my mom. All these people are texting me that they've seen it. And I'm just like, “I did not in any world expect for any of this to happen.” And it's such a weird jumble of emotions that keep oscillating from like this emotion to that emotion. I don't know what the hell to feel, but I'm definitely still a little shaken up from yesterday.
MM: I don't even know. It's so absurd like I just saw some person working with HBO asking to book for me for a casting and I'm like, “What is going on?” I feel like everything's just going at a million miles per hour, I don't even know what the hell to think of all this.
