Tyler, the Creator Wants to be Tyler, the Character Actor

Tyler, the Creator has spent almost his entire life trying to be a star. From an early age he wanted to make music, and has been tunnel-visioned on that goal ever since. “I knew what I was going to do since before I was double digits, which I guess is rarer than I thought,” he tells Vanity Fair.

And Tyler has done it. The 34-year-old rapper and producer, born Tyler Gregory Okonma, spent 2025 on the blockbuster world tour for his eighth studio album, Chromakopia, and releasing his ninth studio album, Don’t Tap the Glass. He recently earned five Grammy nominations, and was named Apple Music’s artist of the year. Even as the ever-enigmatic force constantly reinvents himself, you know a Tyler, the Creator song when you hear one—and you notice his stylish, playful preppy-streetwear fashion when you see it.

It’s ironic, then, that now he’s hoping to disappear.

Tyler makes his feature film debut this month in Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s energetic story about an ambitious table tennis player, played by Timothée Chalamet. Tyler’s charisma translates well to the screen as he matches the frenetic energy of Darius Khondji’s camera and holds his own opposite the seasoned and sensational Chalamet. Tyler plays Wally, a taxi driver, friend of Chalamet’s Marty Mauser, and fellow table tennis player who gets pulled into Mauser’s schemes.

His greatest hope is that anyone watching him in Marty Supreme won’t see him as Tyler, the Creator, whose album they listened to on the way to the theater. Indeed, he’s even credited as Tyler Okonma in the film. “I have a face, my gap [teeth], I have a voice, I have a cadence, how I speak—it’s easy to get caught up in all that,” he says. “And of course people are going to watch it and know it’s me. But I hope that I just feel like I’m a part of the movie.”

Tyler stumbled into Marty Supreme after becoming friendly with Safdie back in 2017. They met through mutual friends. When Safdie told Tyler he had a part for him, Tyler signed on without even reading the script.

On set, he’d learn his lines just before it was time for him to film a scene. “I didn’t try to memorize no lines or nothing—I’m not even going to try to put that weight or pressure on me because then that’ll fuck the scene up,” he says.

He doesn’t have stories to share about getting into character in his trailer, or the research he did to understand Wally (other than keeping in mind that “this is a dude with kids—crazy homie be getting him into shit, but he don’t have the time to dream”). He just showed up on set, much like when he takes the stage on tour—and turned it on in the moment. “It’s been so many shows that I’ve done that were incredible, some of my best performances, and like, bro, I’m asleep nine minutes before,” he says.