No audition for Timothée Chalamet: his viral videos were enough to convince the director of “Wonka” that he was made for the project.
After his performance in Call Me By Your Name in 2017, which propelled him to the limelight, videos of Timothée Chalamet as a student at LaGuardia High School in New York went viral. They featured the Oscar-nominated youngster singing, dancing and rapping under the pseudonym “Lil Timmy Tim” and notably caught the attention of Paddington director Paul King.
Despite rumors over the years that Warner Bros. courted Donald Glover, Ezra Miller or even Ryan Gosling to play Willy Wonka in a new adaptation of Charlie and the chocolate factorythere was only Timothée Chalamet in the mind of whoever leads the project — and the actor didn’t even have to audition.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone (via Variety and ComingSoon), Paul King confirmed that Timothée Chalamet was his only choice for the lead role of Wonka. The filmmaker decided to immediately pitch the project to the Dune star without even giving him an audition because he already knew his musical abilities needed for the role after watching his high school performances on YouTube.
It was a direct offer because he’s awesome and he was the only person in my mind who could do it. But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical performances are on YouTube and have hundreds of thousands of views. So I knew as the ‘stan’ of Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance very well.
The director continued: “I knew it was in his arsenal, but I didn’t know how good he was. When I spoke to him, he was very enthusiastic. He had tap danced in high school and he thought, ‘I would like to show people that I can do that.’”
Check out one of those videos below:
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT WONKA?
Based on the character created by Roald Dahl, Wonka will focus on a young Willy Wonka and his adventures before opening the most famous chocolate factory in the world. The prequel will therefore be led by Timothée Chalamet embodying this young version of the eccentric owner of the chocolate factory. Obviously, the character has already been portrayed by Gene Wilder in the iconic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from 1971, and then by Johnny Depp in the hit version of the same name from 2005.
Wonka is a “genuine musical,” sort of a “really fun hats off to the golden age of MGM musicals,” in the words of Paul King who is directing the project from a screenplay he co-wrote with Simon Farnaby.
Warner Bros. Pictures
“I tried to have darker characters than [ce que] you would find in a Paddington film for example,” King told Rolling Stone. “It’s a crueler world and it’s a meaner world that Willy Wonka finds himself in because that’s the kind of town Charlie grows up in. Unlike Paddington’s world, not everyone is nice in a Roald Dahl world. I definitely have to toy with these preposterous ideas, but I hope I don’t harm a generation of children.”
In front of Timothée Chalametwe can find Hugh Grant, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, or even Keegan-Michael Key – to name but a few.
Wonka will be released in our theaters on December 13, 2023.