6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
NYC supermarket mogul Catsimatidis makes debut in Timothée Chalamet flick: ‘I never knew who he was!'
City billionaire John Catsimatidis is making his big-screen debut in heartthrob Timothée Chalamet's newest film, 'Marty Supreme' — and, in true form, is making cash off griping about the high cost of things.
'I actually got paid! I'm a member of SAG. And so I got a new career at my age,' the 76-year-old supermarket mogul told The Post on Friday.
3 New York City supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis is making his film debut in the upcoming Timothée Chalamet movie 'Marty Supreme.'
x/RealChalamet
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'Josh Safdie — who is the big producer on it — he was looking for Upper West Side people and approached me, and I said, 'Yeah! Sounds like fun!' ' the mogul said.
Catsimatidis — who is also famous these days for his WABC radio show, where he regularly complains about rising costs in the city — revealed he will star in 'two or three scenes' of the new film about the life of a fictional table-tennis star, Mary Mauser.
The film is based on the actual life of legend Marty Reisman, who ran a ping pong parlor in an Upper West Side building owned by Catsimatidis.
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The onetime mayoral candidate also makes a cameo in the final seconds of the film's trailer, which was released Wednesday, in a scene in which Chalamet tries to convince two men with New York accents to purchase a custom orange ping pong ball with his name branded on the surface.
3 'I got a new career at my age,' Catsimatidis crowed to The Post.
Stefan Jeremiah for New York Post
3 Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, a fictionalized version of table tennis legend Marty Reisman.
x/RealChalamet
'A custom ball like that, it's going to cost a lot of money,' Catsimatidis tells the actor.
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When it came to working with the Academy Award-nominated Chalamet, Catsimatidis admitted he had no idea who the heartthrob was.
'I never knew who he was! I was complaining to the director that he was getting a bigger role than me!' he quipped to The Post.
It wasn't clear whether Chalamet, a fellow New Yorker and public-school graduate, knew who Catsimatidis was before filming.
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Catsimatidis said his ping pong-peddling scene took as many as seven hours to shoot.
'I would say I'm used to days of work for five days,' Catsimatidis told The Post. '[Filming] was like 14-hour days. By the time I got [done], it was like midnight.'
