Meet Hollywood’s table tennis expert who coached Timothée Chalamet

Timothée Chalamet attends A24's New York premiere for Marty Supreme on December 16 in New York City. Photo / Getty Images

As a kid, Diego Schaaf was playing the piano at a youth centre in his native Switzerland when a table tennis paddle collided with his head. Schaaf wasn’t hurt, but the best player in town came running over to apologise. “As a reward, I got to play with him,” Schaaf explained, pinpointing the moment where the sport first made an impact on him.

By the time Schaaf moved to Los Angeles, it was “too late to become an Olympic player, but early enough to still understand the sport and be able to play it”. Schaaf combined that understanding with his interest in film, and he and his wife Wei Wang (who played in the 1996 Olympics) became go-to consultants for Hollywood’s table tennis-related scenes, starting in the 90s. They assisted with the scenes in Forrest Gump where Tom Hanks gets handy with a paddle and the Friends episode where Paul Rudd and Matthew Perry compete. These days, when Schaaf and Wang aren’t on a shoot, they operate a handful of table tennis clubs around Los Angeles.

A few years ago, table tennis champion Sean O’Neill sent Schaaf a Facebook message about a film that needed his skills. Schaaf ended up speaking with Uncut Gems co-director Josh Safdie, who was working on Marty Supreme, which follows a scrappy ping-pong talent played by Timothée Chalamet and has received rapturous reviews before its Christmas nationwide release.

Schaaf and Wang coached Chalamet and advised Safdie on using visual effects for scenes where the table tennis ball was added afterwards, digitally. In an interview with The Washington Post, Schaaf, 72, talks about working with Chalamet, scripting the table tennis action in Marty Supreme and how the table tennis community has felt about the film.

Wei Wang and Diego Schaaf attend the Los Angeles premiere of A24's Marty Supreme at Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on December 8 in Beverly Hills, California. Photo / Getty Images

Q: What was your first conversation with Josh Safdie like?

First of all, he made it very clear to me that this was going to be serious table tennis. He was not going to phone it in. He wanted it right and he wasn’t totally sure how he was going to do the table tennis. He realised there was going to be a whole level of difficulty that one may not think about.

I said, “The sheer fact that you think this is difficult makes me believe that we’re going to pull this off, in a great way.”

Q: Timothée Chalamet had been practising table tennis for a while to get ready for the film. How much were you interacting with him?

When we started working with him, we took him from the level he had in 2024 in the summer, [they began shooting in September] and [said], “Okay, this is what we’ve got to build on now.” That’s when it became serious. That’s when we started having a closer idea of how the movie was going to be shot, what he had to be able to do.

He came from the commitment of actually playing guitar and singing in A Complete Unknown, so he wanted to do it himself. Doing table tennis himself, he pretty soon realised that was going to be difficult. Even if he could play a point, it’s just not consistent enough with all the cameras running. To do five takes, six takes in a row, not even Olympic players could do that because they play spontaneous points, not scripted points.

We realised it had to be scripted to be able to film it. And because it was scripted, we had to practise it first with a real ball. He had to understand the physical layout of the point: where does he have to go? When does he have to go there? When you later on do VFX and put the ball in there, it’s critical that the player goes to the right place.

We had about maybe 60 points that we scripted out. Different shots take different time. If you play an underspin ball from far away, for example, that ball travels more slowly. So, now we need a certain number of frames before the opponent does his stroke. That’s unbelievably complex.

We needed a lot of rehearsal with that and I was amazed. Timothée wound up getting a better feel for it than most professional players because professional players take the cue from the ball. You take the ball away there, they all were like “What is the timing?” Of course, they have a good sense of timing and then they learned it quickly. But Timothée was right there on top of it.

Wei Wang and Diego Schaaf pose for a photo at the Los Angeles premiere of A24's Marty Supreme at Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on December 8 in Beverly Hills. Photo / Getty Images

Q: His character, Marty, is filmed playing the table tennis matches in these wide, long shots. How were you guys thinking about building a sense of realism?

A: Josh knew exactly how he wanted to present the whole thing. He said, “I have these cameras set up in a specific way, I know how I want to cut this.” I said, “Well, our safest way is to just give you complete points. And then you cut whatever you want. Let’s see if we can get as many complete points to get that whole flow.”

Where I was co-operating with him was with the development of the points: who goes ahead? Where do you build the tension? There’s specific degrees of tension that we feel during a match that do translate to the spectator. If you see a player under a certain type of pressure, that goes right out to the audience. We wanted to find those and put them in the right spot.

We went through hours and hours and hours of classic table tennis footage. And modern table tennis footage, as well, that we transcribed to be like the 50s style [to have] points happen that back then would have never been played.

Timothée Chalamet surprised guests at Airbnb’s latest Experience, The Marty Supreme Invitational, on December 18 in New York City. The underground table tennis tournament was held in celebration of A24’s highly anticipated film Marty Supreme. Photo / Getty Images

Q: Did you guys look at Marty Reisman’s playing? I know he inspired the film.

A: A lot of it. Very early on we looked at how [Reisman] moves. Timothée kind of had that dancing feel. When he played table tennis, Timothée emulated that and then developed his own style based on that. It was very clear at the beginning, let’s see what an elegant player of the early 50s looked like and Marty Reisman had certain footwork moves – very early on, he was a pioneer in those footwork moves.

Q: What did Timothée struggle with the most in terms of adapting to the game?

A: It all was very difficult. He handled it all with – can’t say ease because it wasn’t easy, but – the same commitment. And then he developed methods that worked for him. For example, memorising a long sequence. If you have 10 shots in a sequence, that’s very, very difficult. None of us [players] ever do that. He found names for each point. Name a point and that will call up for him, “Okay, that’s that point where that goes twice to the backhand and then chop to the forehand.” He would remember that way. [A representative for the film said Chalamet wasn’t available for comment.]

Q: In the table tennis world, are people excited about the film? Are they hesitant about the portrayal of the sport?

A: A lot of excitement. A24 was generous enough to organise a screening for our clubs. They all were super excited because it’s not a table tennis movie. It’s a movie that, you go in there and it just overwhelms you with action. For me, I’ve watched it three times now. I still have the same reaction. Every time I watch it, I’m watching the movie and, oh yeah, there’s also table tennis.

They’re all very happy with the way table tennis has been depicted. Because you watch that, you feel the way it does in a match. You feel that tension, you feel that level of discomfort, the little bit of anger that comes up. You feel all of that. It’s all there.

Marty Supreme. Photo / A24

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