WONKA’ director offered the role to Timothée Chalamet with no audition needed after seeing his high school performances on YouTube.
Turns out those embarrassing YouTube videos from your younger years might actually have a purpose after all. At least, they did for Wonka star Timothée Chalamet, who snagged the coveted titular role of the legendary chocolatier without an audition simply because of his viral YouTube videos from high school.
The recently released trailer for Wonka set the stage for what Paul King calls a “proper” musical that pays homage to the “golden age of MGM musicals.“ But that doesn’t mean that the film is lacking the darker side found in Roald Dahl’s novels. “Certainly, I tried to have darker characters than [what] you would find in a ‘Paddington’ movie, for example,” King said. “It’s a crueler world and it’s a meaner world that Willy Wonka finds himself in because that’s the sort of city that Charlie grows up in. Unlike the ‘Paddington’world, not everyone is nice in a Roald Dahl world. I definitely got to play with those grotesque ideas, but I hope not to damage a generation of children.“
As noted by Variety, Wonka director Paul King revealed that he offered the role to Chalamet sans any formal audition after seeing the videos of his teenage musical performances. “It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King shared. “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 from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.” (We’re all Timmy stans inside.)
Paul King said that Timothée Chalamet didn’t even have to audition for Wonka. “It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King said. “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 from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.“
King continued, “I knew that was in his arsenal, but I didn’t know how good he was. When I spoke to him he was quite keen. He’d done tap dancing in high school and he was like, ‘I’d quite like to show people I can do that.’“
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