Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet are the ‘it’ couple of awards season – why do so many people have a problem with that?

When Timothée Chalamet took to the stage at the Critics Choice Awards recently to accept his Best Actor trophy in front of a room full of Hollywood peers, the 30-year-old seemed to only have (slightly tearful) eyes for one person. “I’ll just say thank you to my partner of three years,” he declared, gazing out at his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner. “Thank you for our foundation. I love you. I couldn’t do this without you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

An earnest actor delivering a gushy shout-out to their significant other as part of an ever-so-slightly grandiose victory speech? It’s hardly a rare occurrence, especially during awards season. But for Chalamet, this particular public declaration of affection marked the first time that the Marty Supreme star and Oscar hopeful has talked publicly about his relationship with one of the most famous (and most followed) women in the world.

Just a few weeks beforehand, the couple made a joint appearance at the Marty Supreme premiere in Los Angeles, twinning in orange leather ensembles that had been custom-made by the brand Chrome Hearts. His-and-hers dressing always guarantees a flurry of red carpet attention (not least when the outfits are tangerine-hued), and it felt like the pair were positioning themselves as a power couple to rival their matchy-matchy forebears like Posh and Becks, Britney and Justin, or Brad and Gwyneth.

And by any metrics, Timothée and Kylie (Kylothée? Timlie? What’s the correct portmanteau here?) are a power couple. He’s a genuine box office draw in an era when everyone would much rather stay at home and stream, and that rarest of creatures: a proper Gen Z film star. And at 28, she’s a multi-millionaire member of the most famous family on the planet who can spark a beauty trend by merely posting an Instagram story to her 392 million followers.

Just a few months ago, though, this level of exposure would have been unthinkable for the couple, who have always kept their romance relatively private despite their respective high profiles. Take Chalamet’s November interview with American Vogue, for example, in which he refused point-blank to discuss the relationship. “I don’t say that with any fear, I just don’t have anything to say,” he told the magazine.

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So what has prompted this new approach? Call me a cynic, but it’s probably no coincidence that Chalamet and Jenner’s loved-up publicity tour comes during the actor’s biggest play yet for Oscar glory. Chalamet has already received two Academy Award nominations – no mean feat for a fresh-faced star who has only just entered his thirties – and over the past few months has gone all out in his efforts to gain critical and commercial recognition for his turn as ping pong maestro Marty Mauser.

He is surely aware that any sweet gesture involving his extremely famous girlfriend is likely to go very viral very quickly; by extension, that’ll get people talking about his movie, heading out to see it and, if they’re industry types, possibly even voting for it (awards season campaigning is basically just a charm offensive, after all). Kylie, meanwhile, is the daughter of self-branding queen Kris Jenner; even a seemingly off-the-cuff moment involving her has probably been workshopped and signed off beforehand. You can almost imagine the back-and-forth over the wording choices.

But you also can’t help but wonder whether Chalamet’s speech was partly an attempt to stick two fingers up at the countless naysayers who have criticised the couple since their early days together. Because from the start, what has felt different – and a bit, well, off – about this relationship has been the sheer levels of snark and even vitriol that it has provoked online (with most of it directed firmly at Jenner).

Rumours of their romance started to circulate early in 2023, after they were spotted chatting at the Jean Paul Gaultier show at Paris Fashion Week. Jenner was fresh out of her longtime on-again, off-again relationship with rapper Travis Scott, the father of her seven-year-old daughter Stormi and three-year-old son Aire; Chalamet, meanwhile, had been single for a while after previously being linked to Lily-Rose Depp, his co-star in Netflix movie The King. The Instagram gossip account DeuxMoi started posting tip-offs about the new couple soon after (is there a more Gen Z way to soft launch your love story? I think not).

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Grainy pap shots showing the pair arriving at one another’s homes started doing the rounds, along with the usual wishy-washy quotes from “close” sources, gushing contradictorily about how Timothée and Kylie were taking things slow and/or very, very into each other. It took a few months more for them to make their first proper public appearance together, in the VIP section at a Beyoncé concert, no less. Soon after came a joint jaunt to the US Open tennis championship, where they were photographed engaging in some courtside PDA.

So far, so classic romance: a coming together of two photogenic rich people, signposted to the public through a few pictures of them snogging in various exclusive places. But as soon as Jenner and Chalamet started being linked in headlines, a backlash started to foment, which went well beyond the usual collective bafflement prompted by an unexpected celebrity link-up.

The general tenor of the criticism? That Kylie wasn’t “good enough” for the internet’s dreamboy. That Timmy, our finely cheekboned, Oscar-nominated arthouse prince, was somehow slumming it by dating a reality star best known for flogging lip kits. It wasn’t just anonymous fan accounts on Twitter/X weighing in, either. In a 2023 article for British Vogue, which was later deleted following criticism, one writer pondered how they might spend their time together. “Does he hold her make-up brushes while she contours?” they asked. “Does she help him sift through Wes Anderson scripts? Does he give Stormi French lessons?”

The not-so-subtle subtext to all this was that Chalamet was clever and cool, while Jenner was brash and silly, and therefore they were somehow intellectually incompatible. That these characteristics were just assumptions based on the former’s film roles and the latter’s career in cosmetics didn’t seem to matter. Timothée’s name features a tres sophisticated acute accent and he’s starred in a few Greta Gerwig movies, so, according to the internet, he must be destined for someone more serious and, quote unquote, highbrow.

As their relationship has continued, some of the vitriol has cooled off a little; plenty of commentators have pointed out the total ridiculousness of speculating about someone’s personality based on the fact that they sound a bit French. Yet whenever Kylie accompanies Timothée as his plus one for various film awards shows, the conversation plays out similarly online, as if she somehow shouldn’t be there. Take last year’s Golden Globes, for example, when the internet seemed to collectively rejoice over footage of actor Demi Moore appearing to “snub” Jenner (Moore, of course, probably had no idea that the video of her simply congratulating Chalamet on his nomination would be interpreted in such a way).

Perhaps we’re still struggling to get our heads around “Kylothée” because they seem to represent such different models of stardom. Chalamet, who’s been touted as a successor to Leonardo DiCaprio, embodies the more traditional route to fame, honing a talent and then becoming celebrated for that. Whereas Jenner is reality royalty, having appeared on TV (as herself) since she was 10, the names of her and her sisters are touted as the pinnacle of “famous for being famous”.

Yet the pair probably have plenty more in common than you might think at first glance. They’ve both had to deal with the spotlight from a young age (Chalamet started landing TV roles in his early teens). They’re both unabashedly ambitious and entrepreneurial, Jenner with her beauty brand and Chalamet with his unorthodox approaches to marketing his movies. They’re both extremely online. And they might just turn out to be the Gen Z power couple par excellence. Perhaps the only thing that’s really “odd” about this “odd couple” is our strange reaction to them.