First things first: Marty Supreme, which is about an aspiring ping-pong champion named Marty Mauser (played by Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet) in 1950s New York, features an incredible ensemble of actors, and many of its casting choices are clever and even inspired\u2014casting Fran Drescher as Marty\u2019s mom, for instance, was a stroke of pure genius. This is not a list of those people. This is about all the others\u2014the many, many people who aren\u2019t actors per se but show up in this movie. What Highlights magazine is to squirrels, Marty Supreme is to actors who are famous for everything but acting: It\u2019s lousy with them, from fashion\u2019s Isaac Mizrahi to \u201cMan With the Golden Voice\u201d Ted Williams.<\/p>\n
In his previous movies (made with his brother, Benny), director Josh Safdie revealed a fondness for casting nonactors<\/a>, people whom he and his brother discovered on the street, in diners, and so on. This is not a list of all the people like that, though there are many. Instead, this is a list of all the people in Marty Supreme who aren\u2019t actors but are famous elsewhere. Whether you want to know who to look for or you\u2019ve already seen the movie and want to know who you just saw, here is an annotated list, helpfully ranked from most exciting to least. (Please let me know<\/a> if you think I missed someone.)<\/p>\n 16. Mitchell Wenig<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Consider this one a bonus: Though Wenig, who plays essentially a henchman in this movie, has acted in a few movies now, the main thing he\u2019s known for is appearing in previous Safdie films. You may remember his bald head and fuzzy triangle of hair from Uncut Gems<\/a>, but there were two of him then, because Wenig\u2019s brother Stewart was also in that movie. Did the Safdie brothers\u2019 breakup<\/a> force them to split custody of the Wenig brothers? Because we\u2019re only getting 50 percent of the previous level of Wenig and also because this one only sort of counts, this gets last place.<\/p>\n 14 and 15. Kemba Walker and Tracy McGrady<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Walker and McGrady are both former NBA players (Walker retired last year and McGrady in 2013), and they show up as 1950s Harlem Globetrotters in Marty Supreme. After Kevin Garnett\u2019s part in Uncut Gems, it\u2019s clear that the Safdies love basketball, but I\u2019d love to hear sports fans\u2019 theories about why Josh Safdie included these two in particular in this movie. Is their relative randomness part of it? This movie is definitely interested in the athletes that don\u2019t make history books. In any case, their low ranking is mostly due to the blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it length of their cameo.<\/p>\n 13. Larry \u201cRatso\u201d Sloman<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Sloman, a veteran of several Safdie movies who is in his 70s, plays Marty\u2019s uncle Murray Norkin, who wants his nephew to give up ping-pong and make an honest living as a shoe salesman. \u201cRatso,\u201d who was given that name by his former girlfriend Joan Baez, is a bit of New York counterculture character\u2014he wrote for Rolling Stone, wrote a book with Bob Dylan, ghostwrote a bunch of other books, and a few years ago started attempting a music career of his own.<\/p>\n 12. David Mamet<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Mamet plays the director of the play Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s character, Kay Stone, is starring in within the movie, which isn\u2019t much of a stretch, because he\u2019s a playwright and director in real life\u2014Glengarry Glen Ross is the play of his that most people have heard of. (He\u2019s also actress Zosia Mamet\u2019s father.) Mamet doesn\u2019t act much, though he did notably also play a rabbi in Ari Aster\u2019s Beau Is Afraid. His inclusion in the movie is cool and insider-y, but he doesn\u2019t actually do much on screen, which is why he\u2019s ranked here.<\/p>\n 11. Isaac Mizrahi<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Mizrahi is a fashion designer who once argued on QVC that the moon is a planet<\/a>, but he\u2019s also done a fair bit of acting, often playing himself on fashion-forward shows like Sex and the City and Gossip Girl. Here, he plays the actress Kay Stone\u2019s publicist, Merle, who memorably tells Marty, \u201cWhen you see this lady act, you\u2019re gonna feel like you got your cock sucked by a vacuum cleaner.\u201d He\u2019s perfect in the role, but he\u2019s been in too many things to get a higher ranking here.<\/p>\n 10. John Catsimatidis<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n While other first-time actors come from movie-adjacent fields like fashion and the arts, Safdie gets extra credit for plucking Catsimatidis out of New York City infamy but everywhere-else obscurity. He gets a few minutes of screentime as the father of Marty\u2019s friend Dion, who along with his son invests in Marty\u2019s idea for a line of orange ping-pong balls. He\u2019s a businessman, much like Catsimatidis himself, who is the CEO of the grocery chain Gristedes as well as a real estate developer and former mayoral candidate.<\/p>\n 9. Ted Williams<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n You may not know Williams\u2019 face, but you might remember his voice and his story<\/a>. In 2011, a video of Williams, a former radio announcer who was homeless at the time, went viral. In it, he demonstrated that, even though he didn\u2019t look like it, he could still speak in that distinctive pleasing announcer cadence. In the aftermath of the video, some opportunities came Williams\u2019 way, but he also continued to struggle and sometimes regretted ever getting famous. It\u2019s very nice to see him healthy and employed here. His experiences also feel resonant with Marty\u2019s, a parable about the limits of talent.<\/p>\n 8. George Gervin<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Former pro basketball player Gervin plays Lawrence, an older man who runs a ping-pong club where Marty practices and occasionally sleeps. (Gervin\u2019s only other acting credit is playing himself in Uncle Drew, a 2018 comedy that starred Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O\u2019Neal.) Gervin, going by the nickname \u201cIceman,\u201d played for the Spurs in the 1970s and 1980s, and was regarded as one of the best players of the era<\/a>, known especially for his \u201cfinger roll\u201d shot. For his last season in the league, he was traded to the Bulls, where he played alongside a then-up-and-coming youngster named Michael Jordan. In other words, Gervin\u2019s real-life story of being adjacent to sports greatness makes him a perfect fit for this movie.<\/p>\n 7. Mariann Tepedino<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Tepedino appears in the first scene of the film as a customer Marty is helping at his uncle\u2019s shoe store. She has a couple of other credits on IMDb<\/a>, but she is niche-famous to one very specific demographic: listeners of The Howard Stern Show. Stern fans know Tepedino as \u201cMariann from Brooklyn,\u201d and her frequent calls into the show (and signature Brooklyn accent) have earned her unofficial mascot status and membership in what Stern calls his \u201cWack Pack.\u201d The Daily Beast profiled her in 2013, dubbing her Stern\u2019s \u201cbiggest fan<\/a>.\u201d On Instagram, where she has more than 50,000 followers, you can hear a clip of her recounting her experience<\/a> working with \u201cTimoth\u00e9e Cham-o-lay,\u201d as she pronounced it, on air. As great as this backstory is, her part is tiny, hence her spot here.<\/p>\n 6. Philippe Petit<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Petit is a high-wire artist whose most famous accomplishment is his 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. (There\u2019s a documentary, Man on Wire, about it.) In Marty Supreme, he has a tiny part as an MC at a Harlem Globetrotters game in Brussels\u2014he introduces the half-time act, in which Marty faces off in ping-pong against a seal. All I can say is that putting the only guy to ever walk between the Twin Towers in a movie and giving him this particular role is pure Safdie casting chaos.<\/p>\n 5. Penn Jillette<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n It\u2019s not very often that you fail to spot 6\u20196\u201d man, but I didn\u2019t recognize magician Penn Jillette either of the times I saw the movie. To be fair, he\u2019s without the facial hair he usually sports for his role as a farmer Marty encounters while looking for a lost dog in New Jersey. He also takes on, let\u2019s say, a very different affect than his regular animated persona. Jillette has done a lot of acting (shoutout to his recurring role on Sabrina the Teenage Witch), so his casting isn\u2019t quite as much of a novelty as some others, but he gets points for disappearing into a more serious role.<\/p>\n 4. Pico Iyer<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Iyer is a well-regarded travel writer and essayist who now has a single acting credit to his name, as Marty Supreme\u2019s Ram Sethi, a haughty table tennis official who seems to be the one person Marty can\u2019t hustle. It\u2019s actually a pretty big part for a nonactor! As for how Iyer ended up in the movie, it probably has something to do with the TED Talk he once gave called \u201cWhat Ping-Pong Taught Me About Life<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 3. Naomi Fry<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Like Iyer, Fry is also a writer taking on her first acting role: She plays actress Kay Stone\u2019s assistant during a play rehearsal. In real life, Fry writes funny cultural commentary for the New Yorker and appears on its Critics at Large podcast. And this star turn isn\u2019t actually all that surprising because she has a knack for ending up in unexpected places, whether it\u2019s on Instagram hanging out with John Mayer, in a photo the camera pans by on The Bear, or as a namedrop on Hacks. While I am biased for finding it thrilling that Safdie gave this role to a (sort of) workaday journalist, this casting is yet another example of the director\u2019s talent for spotting people with the kind of interesting faces and auras you won\u2019t see in other movies.<\/p>\n 2. Tyler, the Creator<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n Should this even count for this list? Debatable. Best known as a rapper, Tyler has acted before, but never in a part this big or buzzy. He is vibrant and hilarious as taxi driver Wally, Marty\u2019s friend and partner in hustling who has slightly better judgment but is unlucky enough to get caught up in Marty\u2019s schemes regardless.<\/p>\n 1. Kevin O\u2019Leary<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n You may have already heard that a panelist from Shark Tank is in this movie, but the only more surprising thing than that is that a panelist from Shark Tank is great in this movie. O\u2019Leary plays Milton Rockwell, the CEO of a pen company who is married to Kay Stone. (Yes, the guy from Shark Tank is married to Gwyneth Paltrow in this! It just keeps getting more improbable!) Though Marty is way more dishonest than Rockwell in this movie, there\u2019s something sinister about him, and that\u2019s by design. As Safdie recently explained in an interview<\/a>, he cast O\u2019Leary not in spite of but because he\u2019s \u201cknown for being an asshole.\u201d He \u201cexudes corporate colonialism,\u201d and that makes him the ideal choice for this part. Though it, too, is also arguably too big a part to count for this list, it was an audacious move that paid off. Since I can\u2019t very well offer it $100,000 for a 20 percent equity stake, the least I can do is give it first place.<\/span><\/p>\n \n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/compote.slate.com\/images\/81d8aead-2d95-4e6e-8c15-800c2b9d494b.jpeg?crop=1560%2C1040%2Cx0%2Cy0&width=140\")
\n <\/div>\nDana Stevens<\/h4>\n
Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s New Movie Is Part of a Trend I Can\u2019t Stand<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n