NEED TO KNOW
- Joan Baez opened up in a new interview about watching A Complete Unknown, which portrayed her relationship with Bob Dylan
- Baez said her team was “outraged” about some things in the film, but she told them not to “bother” fact-checking it
- Baez called the movie “fun,” though admitted things in real life didn’t play out exactly like they did on screen
Joan Baez isn’t sweating A Complete Unknown.
Baez, 84, spoke about the Bob Dylan biopic in a new interview with Rolling Stone published on June 11. In the 2024 film, Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan, 84, while Monica Barbaro plays Baez. Elle Fanning played Sylvie Russo, a fictional girlfriend of Dylan’s who was based on his real girlfriend, Suze Rotolo.
Baez told Rolling Stone she saw the movie not long after it was released in December. “People in my camp, they’re outraged, and they’re fact-checking. And I said, ‘Don’t bother,’ ” she said. “It’s a fun movie.”
Baez then started pointing out inaccuracies to the outlet — she only briefly lived in the Village with Dylan, they didn’t stay in the Chelsea Hotel — but then stopped. “But details, details, see what I mean?” she said.
“Someone said, ‘Did you really do that to Bob?’” she said, holding up a middle finger. “I said, ‘No, I did this.’ ” She held up a second.
“But I was pleased they were getting the feeling right. The music was brilliant. I thought Chalamet did a good job,” she said, though she thought the actor was “a bit too squeaky clean.” She called that scruff part of Dylan’s “charm.”
But she said the film and Chalamet, 29, got “a lot” of Dylan right, including his “bad attitude.” Some shots of Chalamet and Barbaro, 34, looked “startlingly” like her, and she said the actress “worked like mad” to get it right. Baez shared that she reached out to the actors and talked at length to Barbaro and to Edward Norton, who played Pete Seeger.
Baez also said to Rolling Stone that in real life, Dylan’s relationship with Rotolo “wasn’t happening in my face.” The movie received eight Oscar nominations, including for Chalamet, Barbaro and Norton.
As for why Baez and Dylan are still connected all these decades later, she said, “If you look me up and Google me, there’s maybe one thing on me, and then it’s directly to ‘Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.’ ”
“If you’re in a room with Bob, anywhere with Bob, you’re diminished automatically,” she said. “But there are worse people to be glued at the hip to.”
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Dylan and Baez started dating in the early 1960s when she had already found fame. He broke up with her in 1965. Her 1975 hit “Diamonds & Rust” was inspired by their time together.
“We were in our early 20s,” she told PEOPLE in 2023. “We were stupid, and you can’t blame somebody forever. I certainly tried but finally stopped.”
She said she found “total forgiveness” for him after she painted a portrait of him in his youth. “I put his music on, and I just dissolved into tears. When I was through with the painting, I had no animosity left. None. It’s remained that way,” she said.
A Complete Unknown is streaming now on Hulu.
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