Down the hall and unbeknownst to the group of grade school girls practicing their tendus in mismatched leotards, Timothée Chalamet has spent an hour walking in circles. He has experimented with footfalls. Tweaked the swing of his gait. Paused, reset, touched the tips of his long fingers together. Drilled this circular walk once, twice, a dozen times—until it looks effortless and unstudied. We’re at a dance studio in Hell’s Kitchen, the same neighborhood in which 29-year-old Chalamet grew up, and he is rehearsing for a performance that has bedeviled peers and predecessors, that can drive an actor to madness, or at least to an unforced error on late-night television: the role of leading man who must now promote his latest project.

Chalamet has devised a concept—and to be clear this is his c

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