It hasn’t been the best couple of weeks for Timothée Chalamet. He missed out on the Best Actor Oscar to Michael B. Jordan - and of course there’s the controversy over his comments about ballet and opera.

To add to that, social media posts seemingly showing a man appearing to fall on red carpeted stairs, with security guards appearing to rush to his aid, have gone viral. The captions suggest it was the Marty Supreme star.

But did it really happen? BBC Bitesize Other Side of the Story has taken a look at how it all started and what really happened.

How did the rumour start?

The rumour appears to have originated from an account on X. At just after 9pm UK time on Sunday, it shared a post saying: “Timothée Chalamet has reportedly fallen down the stairs at the #Oscars”. It claimed the source was @TheAcademy, which is the official X account for the Oscars.

The post has had a massive 11 million views and been shared and liked thousands of times. People on TikTok have also been sharing similar photos. One TikTok post by PopCultureHQ, which is a parody account, has had hundreds of thousands of likes.

Does the photo really show Timothée Chalamet falling at the Oscars?

No - the X account clearly states that it is a “parody satire fake news page”. It says the source was the official Oscars Twitter account, which has not shared an image like this.

Despite this, people have been asking if it really happened. Some users directed the question to Grok, a free AI assistant that responds to users' prompts on the app.

It seems to be a play on a meme from 2015. “Jason Derulo falling down the stairs” went viral after people thought he resembled an unknown man in the real photo. A search on Getty Images, a trusted source of licensed stock photos, shows that the original is from the Cannes Film Festival in 2011.

Why was the photo posted?

The images - including some manipulated to show Chalamet’s face - combine a popular meme with a public figure lots of people have been talking about. He’s been in the headlines a lot recently.

Chalamet wore an all-white suit to the Oscars, resembling the clothes worn by the man in the original photo.

The Oscars is also a big talking point, with people looking for light-hearted moments to share with friends and family. Always think critically about why something has been shared on your socials and consider if it could be clickbait or being used for engagement on socials.

How can you tell if a photo like this is real?

To try and spot if an image post is real or not look on the account to see if its name or bio states that content coming from this account may be fake, or AI generated. If you're still not sure, you can do a reverse image search of the image to try and find where the original came from.

In this case, a reverse image of the story brings up the original Jason Derulo memes and a number of articles from trusted news organisations debunking it.

Remember it's always best to fact-check news you spot online to see if it's been reported by official and reliable sources.

This article was published in March 2026

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