‘My mom said that’s the first time she’s seen me smile in a movie,’ Oscar nominee says of new movie musical
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When he initially got the script for Wonka, Timothee Chalamet had an inkling that a musical prequel that follows Willy Wonka before he became a world famous chocolatier might be seen as a quick cash grab.
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After all, Hollywood has a penchant for squeezing every dollar out of every IP it can.
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But by the time he got to the film’s opening musical number — when Willy croons “Will I crash and burn or go up like rocket?” — he had been irresistibly sucked into the fantastical world conjured by the film’s writer and director, Paul King.
“It was just totally magical,” Chalamet, 27, told Postmedia in an interview. “He was a director I was hugely inspired by. It was a total dream come true.”
The film, which is in theatres now, is billed as a companion piece to the 1971 original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that starred Gene Wilder.
King, who also wrote and directed the Paddington movies, dived back into Roald Dahl’s original 1964 book to craft a new story that would reimagine Wonka as an ambitious dreamer who hopes to open his very own chocolate shop.
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“I love the original film and I love this director’s prior two movies, Paddington and Paddington 2,” Chalamet said at Wonka’s Canadian premiere in Toronto this week. “Those are very heartwarming movies that leave you feeling good.”
King told Rolling Stone earlier this summer that he offered Chalamet the role after watching rap videos he recorded as a teenager on YouTube.
“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 Timothee 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.”
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His past life as Lil Timmy Tim (his teenage hip-hop alter ego) helped him prepare for the role of Wonka because it allowed him to tap into the inhibitions he had as a youngster. “It was getting back into my high school bag in some way,” the Golden Globe-nominated Chalamet said. “I was just trying to be free.”
But even though he grew up around musical theatre, it wasn’t easy finding his footing as a song and dance man again. “It was more challenging than I thought,” Chalamet said with a smile.
Chalamet said playing Wonka is a departure from his more serious work in Dune, his Oscar-nominated role in Call Me By Your Name and last year’s Bones and All, and showing off his sweeter side made his family happy to see him step outside his comfort zone.
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“My mom said that’s the first time she’s seen me smile in a movie,” he said breaking into a grin. “It’s something I don’t usually do.”
With a supporting cast that includes Keegan-Michael Key, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant (as an Oompa-Loompa) and newcomer Calah Lane as Willy’s lovable sidekick, Wonka is a throwback to the whimsical Hollywood musicals that starred the likes of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Of course, Wilder’s Pure Imagination makes an appearance alongside new songs penned by Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.
“It felt like a different challenge. A different thing to tackle,” Chalamet said.
In a world seemingly filled with endless amounts of bad news, Chalamet hopes that Wonka reminds audiences to embrace optimism.
“(It’s about) the importance of love. The importance of family,” he said. “The importance of your actual family and your chosen family; the friends and people in your life that make you feel good about where you’re going and where you hope to be going, and not people who drag you down.”
Wonka is now playing in theatres.
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