It looked like amore to us.
Almost a year since sparking dating rumors—after which they were seen on actual dates—Lily-Rose Depp and Timothée Chalamet showed in September that busy divergent schedules can make the heart grow fonder. Or at the very least really ramp up the urge to make out on a yacht.
The young actors, who play husband and wife in the Shakespearean royal drama The King, reunited in Italy for both the film's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and for some alone(ish) time in Capri a few days later.
The movie was screened on Sept. 2 and Chalamet, 23, and Depp, 20, walked the red carpet together, in that they technically were walking at the same time, next to each other, while flashes went off, but they did not pose for any official-couple pics. They did, however, look like dear friends, all smiles and sharing laughs outside and inside the theater, where they were seated a couple of co-stars apart.
"I feel so blessed to have been able to work with everyone on the team," Depp told Italy's Venezia 76 at the premiere, "with...David and Joel, the co-writer, and just everybody was amazing, so it's really a pleasure." (Joel Edgerton, who also plays Falstaff, co-wrote the script with director David Michôd.)
She knew that so much as uttering the word "Timothée" would make headlines, so she stuck to "the team" (though it's always good form to name-check your writers and director).
The pair expertly avoiding talking about each other, but they couldn't help but share some adoring glances—usually one at a time, when the other wasn't looking, which was pretty adorable—at the premiere.
"Most beautiful time in Venice for The King premiere ... love to the team & festival !!!" Depp wrote a few days later on Instagram.
The King is on Netflix starting today, so streaming shippers can examine the chemistry between the stars as many times as they want—the royal intrigue all the spicier since Depp and Chalamet have continued to steal away and make the most of their geographically desirable moments together.
They went right from the film's New York screening at Cinema Society on Oct. 3 to a makeout session at Tao Downtown before joining the rest of the cast for the after-party at The Box, and then it was back across the pond for The King's next premiere, at the BFI London Film Festival.
Chalamet, who right after shooting The King in 2018 got busy in Concord, Mass., reuniting with Ladybird director Greta Gerwig for her upcoming adaptation of Little Women, then joined Edgerton and Michôd for screenings in Australia and South Korea, leading up to the film's star-studded Los Angeles premiere, which Depp also attended, last week—so no wonder he's ready for a break from the game.
"It's the first time in almost two years I've gotten a breath, so I'm savoring it," Chalamet told Entertainment Weekly recently.
The breath so far has included date night with Depp: they were spotted a couple nights after the premiere having dinner together in L.A. (And Depp was spotted Tuesday morning leaving a café alone, but with two coffees. Just saying.)
Meanwhile, they continue to play their cards close to their designer vests. Talking to Entertainment Tonight on Oct. 10, Depp again avoided the T-word, but called Chalamet an "incredible" actor.
"It's always exciting to work with somebody who you know has given themselves so wholeheartedly to their role and is so invested," she said. "It can be nerve-wracking to work with people whose talent you admire so much, but hopefully it can only make things better."
And sitting down with E! News alongside Michôd, Chalamet deftly deferred to the writer-director when they were asked what made Depp such a compelling screen presence.
"Poise, you know," Michôd mused. "I think it's probably testament to her talent, but it's also I think a testament to who she is. She has grown up around show business, with the circus all around her, and there's something about that stillness with which she holds herself in those scenes. I think it's, again, testament to both her talent and also just none of this stuff has—you know, I'm sure it's scary, performing in any scene, especially when it's as big as the one that she has to nail, but you know, it's just a stillness. It is, it's mesmerizing."
His response seemed to pass muster with Chalamet.
The King, adapted from the four Shakespeare plays known as "the Henriad," stars the Oscar-nominated Chalamet as King Henry V, known for laying waste to France during his short reign. Depp plays his wife, Catherine of Valois, whose father, Charles VI (played by Robert Pattinson), was the king, or dauphin, of France.
Complicated.
In real life their respective families aren't so diametrically opposed. Chalamet is the Manhattan-born son of Marc Chalamet, a UNICEF publications editor from France, and Nicole Flender, a Broadway dancer and actress. His older sister, Pauline, is also an actress.
Chalamet's inner circle includes fellow New Yorker and son-of-artists Ansel Elgort, and he dated Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon for almost a year back when they were teenagers and classmates at La Guardia High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts—so he learned at a young age what it was like having your picture taken on date night.
"Date is very much a scary word, because then that context has been established," Chalamet told W in 2018. "You can always see people on early date behavior."
Depp, meanwhile, was born in Paris, the daughter of French singer Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp, and she originally wanted to sing, too, but she hated performing at a school talent show so much, she realized that wasn't the artistic direction for her. Modeling and eventually acting awaited instead. She was linked to model Ash Stymest for almost two years, breaking up in the spring of 2018, according to Just Jared.
"It is delicate being my age, and trying to do all the regular teenager stuff, and then having that in the spotlight," Depp told Love magazine in 2016. "But I am grateful for what it brings and it is honestly a small price to pay to get to do what I want to do—I am very happy about that."
She and Chalamet—christened "Limothée" by The Cut—started filming The King in the U.K. in June 2018, and a few months later were spotted enjoying autumn in New York, having coffee, walking through Central Park together and, no joke, kissing in the rain after visiting a trendy fried chicken spot in the East Village.
"They were very sweet together," an eyewitness shared with E! News. "They wrapped their arms around each other in line and linked arms the entire time. They seemed very happy to be together."
After dinner, "they huddled together in the rain but loved being outside and were laughing and smiling the entire time. They seemed very into each other."
That December, the day after Christmas, they were bundled up and strolling through Paris.
Then it was back to the business of being Timothée Chalamet for the actor, who Greta Gerwig described to GQ as "a young Christian Bale crossed with a young Daniel Day-Lewis with a sprinkle of young Leonardo DiCaprio, and then raised speaking French in Manhattan and given a Mensa-level IQ and a love of hip-hop."
He had his second eventful awards season in a row, nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for his performance in Beautiful Boy, playing a drug addict whose father (Steve Carell) is trying desperately to save. Mom Nicole was his date to the Globes (his sister went with him in 2018) and he noticeably didn't strike up any particularly cozy-looking conversations with any ladies at the after-parties.
Asked on the Globes carpet if he'd be meeting up with Depp later, Chalamet chuckled and pointed out that he was there with his mother, who told Access Hollywood, "I approve that he's here with me, that he took me to the Golden Globes, of course. I'm so happy to be here. I mean, it's wonderful, right?" When the interviewer noted that Lily appeared to make him speechless, Chalamet graciously chuckled and said, "Yeah."
Depp had two movies come out this year, the French chiller Savage in January, and A Faithful Man, which premiered at the New York Film Festival. She also attended the Chanel Cruise show in Paris with her mom in May.
So, she and Chalamet just so happened to be leading parallel lives—hanging out with their mothers, getting photographed, speaking French—leading up to their Venetian holiday.
While Depp was unsurprisingly a vision in Chanel at The King premiere in Venice, Chalamet—already well on his way to becoming a male style icon—stole the notices with his cummerbund-on-the-outside silver Haider Ackermann suit over a satin collarless shirt. Then in London he dazzled in a sequined hoodie atop simple black slacks and lace-up boots, perhaps a nod to the almost-glittering chainmail he wears as Henry V.
When he was doing press for Call Me By Your Name back in 2017, he didn't take any of the "and how about your love life?" bait, telling the LA Times it was "impossible to compare" anything he'd been through in real life to the transformative, 1980s-set love affair that plays out in the film between him and Armie Hammer.
"There wasn't the all-bearing force field protector of looking at your phone if you're in an uncomfortable situation, which defuses about 97 percent of the interesting moments we have in life," Chalamet noted.
The same certainly goes for a marriage-in-the-name-of-empire-building set in the 1400s, as well.
"There's modern allegories [of this film's plot] in the world," Chalamet told reporters at a press conference for the film in Venice. "There are people still today that come into power by lineage…and who wield it in any way they want." Depp was excited to be playing such a strong woman (especially for the time period), telling W that her character's mother taught her "to not let her life be driven by the men around her."
Certainly words to live by in any era.
Coincidentally, in it's-a-small-world news, Depp was busy in Montreal earlier this year playing Armie Hammer's sister in the upcoming Dreamland, inspired by the 2015 book about the origins of the U.S. opioid crisis. Chalamet remained close to Hammer and his wife Elizabeth Chambers after Call Me By Your Name, so the double dating possibilities are now the stuff dreams are made of.
But if there's one thing Depp learned from her parents when it came to being a public figure attempting to lead a private life, it's that the less she reveals, the easier it will be for her in the long run.
"My parents did a great job of giving me and my brother the most private upbringing we could have, so to value your private life and to keep it for yourself has always been important to me," she told Post Magazine in June.
Which is why, publicly at least, Chalamet has been relegated to "the team" for now.
(Originally published Sept. 16, 2019, at 12:17 p.m. PT)