Timothée Chalamet used Ariana Grande's Wicked vocal coach to play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown

Turns out playing Bob Dylan requires an actor to get a little Wicked. In a featurette from the forthcoming digital release of A Complete Unknown, which Entertainment Weekly can share exclusively above, star Timothée Chalamet discusses his extensive vocal and musical preparation to portray a young Dylan on the rise. "My way in was with the music," Chalamet says in the clip. "That's like my confident spot in the movie." Chalamet brought on a dialect coach, a movement coach, and a vocal coach to help him find that sweet spot. A Complete Unknown director James Mangold breaks down what's fact vs. fiction in Bob Dylan biopic The featurette also showcases a brief interview with vocal coach Eric Vetro. Long-renowned for his voice coaching in Hollywood, he's been more recently known for taking Ariana Grande's pop voice to new Broadway-worthy heights as Glinda in Wicked. Vetro helped Chalamet develop his vocal instrument and, more crucially, broke down how to create his own version of Dylan's signature sound (particularly because Dylan's voice shifts so much over time). "It's at a certain time period, a certain year," Vetro says. "So, we would try to capture what he was doing at that time; how did he sound, and why did he sound that way? And who had influenced him?" Why Walk the Line director James Mangold circled back to Johnny Cash for A Complete Unknown "You go, 'Okay, he was influenced by this particular person,' so then Timmy would listen to that person sing as well," Vetro adds. Timothee Chalamet in 'A Complete Unknown'; Arian Grande in 'Wicked'. Gotham/GC Images; Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures All of this was at the behest of director James Mangold, who urged Chalamet to find Dylan's voice before tackling anything else. "The most important thing for me was that he get to work playing guitar and singing, just on the level of getting his skills up," Mangold says. "How can you possibly make a movie about someone who just sings kind of naked alone with a guitar, only every time they do, it's some kind of unearthly voice coming through their body falsely? It seems to rub in direct contradiction. So that was the very first thing I just exhorted Timmy to do." When A Complete Unknown met Joan: Why James Mangold needed an actress who could ‘hold her own’ as Joan Baez Everyone working on the film, from costar Monica Barbaro to producer Alex Heineman, was blown away by Chalamet's abilities. "He is not only singing the music," says Heineman, "but he is playing the guitar, he's playing the harmonica; he's studied Bob as a character, as a person, and he's really created for the audience this Bob Dylan that we've never seen on screen before." Perhaps the greatest compliment to Chalamet's skills is the praise from his guitar coach, Larry Saltzman. "I arranged the songs in a hierarchy of this is an easier one; this is really hard and everything in the middle," he notes. "And I would explain to him, 'Don't get nervous if this takes you a minute, this is difficult,' but somehow within like 90 seconds, the guy was going [mimes playing]." Neil Young once threw Bob Dylan off his bus but loves A Complete Unknown Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more."I could be showing somebody that for six months, and they could never get it," Saltzman adds. "He'd get the guitar and the harmonica and play 'Hard Rain's Gonna Fall' or something, and I'm just sitting there watching this guy thinking, 'Do you believe what this guy just did?'" A Complete Unknown will be available to purchase digitally on Feb. 25 and Blu-ray on April 1. Watch the clip above for more.