Josh Brolin clearly thinks his Dune: Part Two costar Timothée Chalamet makes the perfect poetry inspiration.
“I’ve been directing [and] I’ve been writing a lot. I wrote an apparently super creepy poem about Timothée Chalamet,” Brolin, 56, quipped in his Saturday Night Live monologue on Saturday, March 9. “I don’t think it’s creepy, but you be the judge!”
Instead of continuing with more jokes about his career and past SNL experience, Brolin used his remaining time to recite the poem about Chalamet, 28.
“Your face is etched by adolescence,” Brolin began in a callback to Chalamet’s 2023 SNL monologue rap about having a baby face. “Your cheekbones jut toward, what are youth-laden eyes that slide down a prominent nose and onto lips of a certain poetry.”
Brolin further admitted that his verse was “weird” in hindsight.
“But, no, I don’t want to sleep with him,” the Marvel actor asserted on Saturday. “But, that’s what I do! I write poems about everyone I work with. Like this week, I wrote a poem about Kenan [Thompson]. Remember, we were rehearsing a sketch and I was looking at you, your face and I just got inspired.”
Brolin then shared his fictional poem about long-running SNL cast member Thompson, 45.
“I look at you with your ageless face and slide down furrowed brow onto sultry eyes,” Brolin read aloud. “Then, jumping off under your sugar cookie cheeks onto the divets of your laugh lines awakens in me a symphony of desire, to which I can only say, ‘What up with that?’”
Thompson, meanwhile, stood on the sidelines of the SNL stage with a glass of white wine. “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool,” he replied with a shocked look on his face before walking away. (“What up with that?” is one of Thompson’s popular SNL catchphrases.)
Brolin didn’t let Thompson’s reaction faze him for the remainder of his monologue.
“Anywho, I write a lot,” Brolin stressed. “I even have a book coming out later this year called From Under the Truck. That whole book is about Kenan.”
Brolin’s writing passions first made headlines last month when he released a Dune: Exposures book of poems about his time on the set of the film. (Brolin and Chalamet both starred in the 2021 film and reprised their roles in the March 2024 sequel.) After the book’s release, the internet speculated that the poems were penned specifically about costar Chalamet.
“That’s gotten out of control,” Brolin joked during a February appearance on Good Morning America. “You know what, when you’re an older actor, OK, and you’re looking at new, great younger talent, I get excited.”
Brolin noted at the time that he was inspired by Chalamet, Zendaya and Florence Pugh’s “hard work” on the set. “So I’m sitting there writing, and I don’t have a scene that day,” he added. “And I’m writing these nice things, and then the internet grabs a hold of it and thinks I want to make out with Timothée or whatever.”
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET.
