When Koto Kawaguchi was offered a part in Marty Supreme, the table tennis player did not even know who Timothée Chalamet was. The deaf Japanese international who had won a bronze medal at the 2022 Deaflympics, was cast by director Josh Safdie after Toyota, which he plays for, sent in his showreel.
Marty Supreme is set to be an awards season favourite, garnering a string of five-star reviews since opening in the US and UK over Christmas. It follows the attempts of the eponymous Marty (Chalamet) to become a table tennis champion in the 1950s.
Kawaguchi plays Supreme’s rival, Koto Endo, with the character based partially on Hiroji Satoh, who played against the real Supreme, Marty Reisman. Kawaguchi is one of a host of non-actors used in the film, with his casting emphasising the importance it places on accurately reflecting the table tennis world. Chalamet himself refused a table tennis stunt double and spent seven years training in order to prepare for the film.
Koto Kawaguchi competing in the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics.
The production approached Table Tennis England when it was looking for extras, with Joshua Bennett, England’s current No 14, appearing in the film. He even gave Chalamet some tips during filming.
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For those in table tennis, the hope is that the intense high-stakes depiction of the sport will supercharge interest in it.
“Any national governing body that has a blockbuster movie featuring their sport recognises the huge exposure it can have to get to new audiences,” says Sally Lockyer, Table Tennis England’s chief executive.
About 400,000 people in England play the sport at least twice a month, a growth of roughly 11% over the past year. Female participation is increasing rapidly, as is participation by under-11s.
London will host the 2026 World Team Table Tennis Championships finals in May, marking the centenary of the world championships being held in the city.
‘The highest level of table tennis blows me away. It’s not just table tennis – it’s entertainment’
Sally Lockyer, CEO of Table Tennis England
“The demand we’ve seen for tickets already is significant,” says Lockyer. “We’ve seen our membership grow recently on the back of World’s coming, because if you are a member of Table Tennis England you get a priority ticket window. So we’re at just under 30,000 members now.
“The highest level of table tennis blows me away. If you look at some of the competition and the way the sport is being presented, it’s not just table tennis – it’s entertainment.”
The combination of a Hollywood film and the world championships should mean, Lockyer hopes, that 2026 is “a big year for table tennis”.
Bounce, the table tennis bar, which opened in London in 2012, says it has already seen a rise in interest via Google searches thanks to the film. “We were unsure exactly what impact it was going to have,” says Ashley Joseph, Bounce’s marketing manager. “But the early signs have been pretty positive. We saw an uplift as soon as the promotion [for the film] started.
“We want to make sure that… we can position ourselves as a really good venue for people to play the sport casually. We want people to be comfortable playing, messing around, and hopefully building a love for it which they can then go and take to a more competitive space if they want to.
“With any sport, there is a hesitancy for people to try something new. You think you’ll be bad, you think you won’t be able to return the ball, you think people are going to be looking at you. There’s all these worries in people’s heads. Venues like ours help break those barriers down.”
The Marty Supreme Invitational, held in New York on 18 December 2025, promoted the film.
A host of promising young stars is also breaking through. French player Félix LeBrun won bronze in Paris at the age of only 17, while teenagers Flavien Coton and Sora Matsushima are both highly thought of. Matsushima has three younger siblings who also play, and he is hopeful that all four could one day play at the same Olympic Games.
From a British perspective, Anna Hursey, 19, became the youngest person to represent Wales in any sport at a senior level when she played a European Championship match for the country at the age of 10. Tom Jarvis, meanwhile, reached the last 16 of the world championships in Doha last year, knocking out 10th seed Dang Qiu in the process.
Marty Supreme takes in Japan’s interest in table tennis, but China still dominates the sport. In four of the past five Olympics, it has won every single gold medal available, with an estimated 300 million people playing table tennis recreationally.
Photographs by A24/AP, Aflo Sport/Alamy, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Airbnb