Ratatouille superfan Josh O’Connor is doing ‘more to promote the film than Disney did’, supporters say

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Josh O’Connor fans have noticed that the star cannot stop mentioning Pixar’s 2007 animation Ratatouille in interviews.

Over the past month, the 33-year-old British actor has been on a worldwide press tour promoting his newest movie Challengers, in which he stars opposite Zendaya and Mike Faist.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, the highly acclaimed tennis psychodrama follows Tashi (Zendaya), a professional tennis player-turned-coach to her husband Art (Faist). To shake him off his losing streak, she enters him into a low-level tournament where they’re reunited with his former best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend, Patrick (O’Connor).

Speaking to Letterboxd – the popular social media platform for movie lovers – at the UK premiere of Challengers in early April, O’Connor was asked to name the last four movies he’d seen.

“Dune 2, which I loved, and I watched Femme, which I really liked. Actually, I watched Soul, the Pixar movie, which I loved. And also, I think I probably did watch Ratatouille again. I love Ratatouille,” he responded before admitting that he’s probably seen the movie “like 100 times”.

While his shoutout to the animated movie may have seemed casual enough, a deeper dive conducted by Vulture into his past interviews has found that his public praise for the film dates back all the way to 2021.

During his press tour for his 2021 romance thriller Mothering Sunday, O’Connor told Grazia UK: “There’s not many films that could get me crying in the same spots.

“But there’s a couple, and one of them is Ratatouille,” he said.

Fast forward to mid-April when he sat down with Letterboxd again and was asked to list his four favourite films.

“Ok these are my four favourite movies. First is Accattone, which is a film I love. Ratatouille, I don’t need to say anything about Ratatouille – a perfect movie. Kes or Looking for Eric [by] Ken Loach. And Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher,” he said.

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“Josh O’Connor is doing more to promote Ratatouille in 2024 than Disney ever did in 2007,” one person noted on X.

A second joked: “Oh to find someone who would love me the way Josh O’Connor loves Ratatouille.”

“Josh O’Connor and his obsession with Ratatouille is so funny,” wrote a third.

“There are actually four people on the Challengers press tour: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor, and the 2007 animated Pixar film Ratatouille,” another added.

Challengers is out in cinemas now.