Timothée Chalamet’s Mom Takes Us Apartment Hunting

Display of the apartment 17a at 1600 Broadway.
Photo: Ben Berkes

It is a rainy and gray March afternoon, not the optimal time to see a 17-storey Midtown apartment above the Times Square M&M store. “He normally obtains a great light,” said Nicole Flender to potential buyers, an Italian couple looking for a foot-to-terre in Manhattan. They look at the windows of the unit, a giant sign of Krispy Kreme shiny through the fog. Flender happily explains the building friendly rental policy and the price, $ 949,000, is good for the market. “It would be an excellent investment,” she said to the Italians, who seem to have no idea that this small real estate agent carrying the Uggs is Timothée ChalametThe mother.

Flender has been selling real estate with Corcoran for almost a decade, from her husband, Marc Chalamet, a French journalist who is now working for the UN, spotted a Groupon agreement for reduced prices at the New York Real Estate Institute. Flender worked as a dance teacher in New York public schools at the time, and his children – at that time working, but not famous, had left the nest: Timmy was about to audition to Call me by name, And his older sister, Pauline, was at the school of actor in Paris. In Corcoran, the manager the interviewer was skeptical. She needed to be able to network in this company. Who did she know?

Many people, said Flender, after seeing his customers with a “Until we saw each other And we settle in an oversized leather love seat in the building hall. Flender’s first registration was a coup: the new $ 1.5 million apartment in Jerry Bock, the Broadway musical composer famous for Fiddler on the roof(His New York accent arrives on the R ‘S in “Jerry”). She obtained links which predate the success of Timmy and Pauline. Flender’s father, Harold, was an actor and novelist whose book Paris Blues was adapted in a film with Sidney Poitier. His mother, Enid, was a Broadway dancer. His brother, Rodman, was a star child who became a writer and director. She and her brother commissioned by Subway at the Guardia High School. In the 1970s, their families were among the first to move to Manhattan Plaza, the subsidized housing complex in Hell’s Kitchen where the majority of tenants had to play artists, through the Mitchell-Lama program in the city. Their neighbors included 30 years Larry Davidwho lived next to an actor named Kenny Kramer, the inspiration for the Seinfeld character.

Flender went to Yale, then danced after graduating in tours Hello, Dolly! And A choir line. Finally, she obtained her master’s degree in Nyu in French literature and lived in Paris, teacher English as a second language. Subsequently, she worked in a call center selling skin care products. “I was good at sales,” she said. She compares the bustle of meeting customers and obtaining references in real estate to the bustle of meeting choreographers and administrators and obtaining actor jobs: “You must be pleasant and like talking to people. It’s a bit like doing a program.”

She and Chalamet married in 1985 and rented an apartment in Midtown. Shortly after the birth of Pauline, Flender left the waiting list for a coveted apartment in Manhattan Plaza and the family moved in a few floors above her mother. This meant that her children were able to have the same kind of childhood in the city as she and her brother did, going to the Guardia and doing homework between dance lessons and launching calls. For a certain time, Flender was a Tony voter thanks to his management position in the union of the actors’ actions, and Timmy and Pauline spent school nights watching shows in the theaters of Broadway.

As they get older, Pauline began to frequent the school of the American ballet and Timmy began to obtain actor concerts in programs like Law and order. But there was no way that Flender became mom. She always worked herself – teaching dance, writing for some player arts magazines and acting from time to time. Fortunately, Enid was able to take Timmy to the auditions and even to the North Carolina to film Country. “It really took a village,” says Flender. There was a few times when she had to intervene on behalf of her children, mommous pink style, as when Pauline was demoted from a director to a background actor while dancing on the set of Royal pain.Flender called Sag-Aftra and changed the show to change her contract: “She obtained the residues for years.”

As a child’s bags of the M&M store to obstruct the street in front of the double doors of the hall, I ask Flender if she saw the viral clip of Timmy talk about being a kid Mitchell-Lama on the podcast of Theo von (“Oh yes, the stars of the restaurant or something else?” Von says in response). She did not do it, but she seems pleasantly surprised that anyone cares or even to know what the program was. “People liked that?” Oh, well, ”she said, smiling. Having known nothing else, Flender is a fact that his family of electric actor, with his multiple generations of working class artists, whose main form of privilege is their subsidized New York accommodation: “We knew they were talented, but we have always thought, We will see.“”

Of course, Flender children have long graduated from Mitchell-Lama income ceilings. Timmy recently bought a house in Beverly Hills at a price of $ 11 million. “Did he ask for my advice? No, “she said, laughing. “He said,” Guess what? I bought a house. “” It is on the same coast where her girlfriend lives, Kylie Jenner. (“I must say that she is charming,” says Flender about Jenner. “She is very kind to me.”) Pauline, who had a child last year, bought an apartment in Paris. Flender says that she will not follow them any; She does not intend to leave Manhattan Plaza or the city, where she is still replacing herself in public schools and recently played in a short film on a bird observer in Central Park. “Do you want your mom to drag you everywhere?” she asked. “I like to be able to visit them.”

In addition, she still likes to sell real estate. She recently helped a client to return an apartment on 33 Riverside Drive, where the Gershwins once lived. She will also take rentals; She has a condo of a room in Hell’s Kitchen for $ 4,000 a month at the moment, and she will sometimes help friends from Timmy and Pauline. And she is close to her colleagues agents of Corcoran – a group of mothers from Manhattan, many in the second and third career. (In November, she took some of them to a special projection of A complete unknown.) However, “I receive strange calls and emails to ask for autographs and things like that,” she says. “A guy called me to sell a very nice apartment on the 53rd street. I said:” How did you find me? “, And he said:” I like your son’s films. “”