The Oscar-nominated heartthrob was Sunday’s look du jour in Washington Square Park as the viral spectacle of a YouTube creator’s surreal Hollywood star fantasia crashed Manhattan’s Washington Square Park.
An unlicensed Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in downtown Manhattan on Sunday, where the guest list ahead of the event blew up to over 2,000 RSVPs, saw four arrests after police had to remove the sea of gathered fans who were later surprised by the heartthrob actor as he mingled among his doppelganger fans.
The event was conceived three weeks ago, according to a tweet from its creator. YouTuber Anthony Po, who apparently did not attempt outreach to city officials or the New York City Parks Department seeking permission to host a large-scale event there. The contest had been advertised on flyers around the city and is one of several similar events hosted by Po, like the Cheeseball Man stunt that went down in Union Square and then went viral in April (“I ate a jar of cheese balls in front of 3,000 people and became like a New York City superhero”).
Po has around 1.8 million followers after breaking off from the team behind YouTube sensation MrBeast, whose large-scale stunts are designed to go viral and tend to each time. Po left that group of pranksters after about a year to make it on his own, mostly with this type of idiosyncratic public event. His simple social media bio states: “I commit to bits, make art, and host events.”
Po donned an eye-catching tux and tophat to host the event this weekend, which offered a $50 prize to the contest’s winner (though all finalists were handed the cash prize in the end). In front of the crowd, contestants were interviewed about their plans with Kylie Jenner (Chalamet’s presumed girlfriend) and their French proficiency.
However, it was just minutes into the competition in Washington Square Park — and this was all before Chalamet’s arrival at the event — when police ordered the group to disperse from the area, CBS News reported. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter by phone on Monday, Po said he was hit with a $500 fine for an “unpermitted costume contest.”
”It’s a shame, though, because… if me and my team don’t show up, that event still happens, right?” Po said by phone. “People don’t even know that there was a person really behind it, right? It was just a meetup, and we told law enforcement, we’re like, ‘Listen, we’re willing to cooperate. You’ve got to, like, let us run this thing.’ And I think because they were being so… they’re law enforcement, right? That’s their job, to be bad at communicating and shut people down.”
Four people were taken into custody and handed summonses at the event, CBS reported. Po indicated to THR that he was only aware of one arrest resulting from an attendee standing his ground while an NYPD officer attempted to remove him from the park.
“He’s basically just [doing] what you do if you’re being pressured by a cop, and then obviously they didn’t accept that… he definitely got fines and court stuff,” Po said.
Paige Nguyen, a producer for the YouTube creator, told THR that she’s been working with Po since she was attending Rutgers University and considers him a mentor.
“It started off as a silly joke and now it’s turned pandemonium,” Nguyen previously told The Associated Press of Sunday’s event.
The group relocated to nearby Mercer Park and the audience eventually crowned Miles Mitchell, a Staten Island college senior, as the winner.
“I’m excited and I’m also overwhelmed,” he said. “There were so many good look-alikes. It was really a toss-up.”