Timothée Chalamet Didn’t Have to Audition for ‘Wonka’ Once the Director Saw His Viral High School Rap Videos
Paul King is a Lil Timmy Tim stan.
The “Wonka” director shared that it was an easy process to cast Oscar-nominated Timothée Chalamet after knowing Chalamet’s triple-threat talent from his viral LaGuardia High School rap videos. Chalamet did not audition to play a young Willy Wonka for the prequel musical film, in part because co-writer King knew about the “absurd” fandom surrounding Chalamet’s talent show clips.
“It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King told Rolling Stone. “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.'”
King called “Wonka” a “proper” musical, which proved to be a “really fun challenge,” adding, “Because the film is set in the late ‘40s, it felt like a really fun hat off to the golden age of MGM musicals.”
The “Paddington” helmer teased that “Wonka” is a “companion” film to 1971’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” starring Gene Wilder.
“Certainly, I tried to have darker characters than you would find in a ‘Paddington’ movie, for example. 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,” King said. “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.”
Chalamet is also confirmed to be singing in James Mangold’s upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.”