‘Wonka’ Director Can’t Wait for You to See Hugh Grant’s Sassy Oompa Loompa

Paul King is no stranger to exploring the fantastical world of a children’s storybook. After two Paddington films, the dark whimsy of Roald Dahl proved to be an exciting new challenge for the director, who has imagined an origin story for the iconic character of Willy Wonka. In the first trailer for Wonka, in theaters Dec. 15, audiences get a glimpse of this youthful version of the chocolatier, embodied with enthusiastic verve by Timothée Chalamet. It also teases a vast supporting cast that includes Keegan-Michael Key, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman, Jim Carter, and Hugh Grant.

While the trailer is short, it’s packed with action, including hints of the film’s European setting and Grant’s sassy Oompa Loompa. For King, who is currently putting the finishing touches on the film in London, the clip captures much of what fans can expect this holiday season.

“I think it captures the spirit really well,” King tells Rolling Stone, speaking ahead of the trailer’s premiere at London’s Rosewood Hotel. “I love it. I was delighted with it. It feels fun and colorful and funny and Christmas-y, and it’s got great music. It’s very Hollywood, which is funny for me. I very much like the heavenly choir [sound] when it says, ‘From the director of Paddington.’ That’s probably the most embarrassing moment of my life to date. I didn’t ask for that! They just did it.”

The trailer does hint at the film’s songs and score, which were written by Neil Hannon and Joby Talbot. However, none of the original songs appear, leaving much to the imagination. King says that the music in Wonka will pay homage to that in Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, an adaptation of Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that starred Gene Wilder as Wonka.

“The 1971 movie, just because I’m as old as I am, was burnt into my eyeballs as a kid,” King remembers. “And I always loved the songs in that — Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were incredible songwriters. The spirit of that and the joy of that seemed really important to the nature of this movie. Reading the book, there’s so much that Dahl writes in verse. So it felt like a no-brainer this should have songs in it. It was a really fun challenge for me because it wasn’t really something I’d done in that sense before. I’ve always had music and singing in things I’ve done, but to actually do proper musical sequences was a really fun challenge. And because the film is set in the late ‘40s, it felt like a really fun hat off to the golden age of MGM musicals.”

Chalamet, who King says was his only choice for the role of Willy Wonka (it was reported that Warner Bros. also looked at Donald Glover, Ryan Gosling, and Ezra Miller before Chalamet was cast in 2021), didn’t audition. King did double check to make sure the actor could sing and dance.

“It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King says. “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. And 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, who co-wrote the script with Simon Farnaby, approached Wonka like a “companion” to both the 1971 Gene Wilder film and Dahl’s book. He wasn’t interested in remaking the story and instead wanted to offer an addition to the scope of the story.

“The starting point was ‘71 because that’s not that far after the book was written and it felt like, in my mind anyway, that so much of the iconography they just got right there,” King explains. “I loved the chocolate room and I loved how the Oompa Loompas looked and I loved the costume of Gene Wilder and that slightly crazy Technicolor world that they inhabit.”

As seen in the trailer, the film brings Willy Wonka to a vague European city, where he decides to pursue candy-making. “I thought, ‘Oh, that could be a fun place for Willy Wonka to turn up and be chaotic and messy and brightly colored and modern and turbocharge a new era,” King notes. While he won’t give it away just yet, the film also reveals where and how Wonka discovered his deep love of chocolate. Like its predecessor, it embraces whimsy and magic. But it’s not quite as dark as what fans might remember from the first film (like many, King is still horrified by the infamous tunnel scene).  

“There’s a macabre quality to Dahl that I love in the way he writes stories,” King says. “He touches places I couldn’t possibly go because my mind is more sugar-coated and I’m more there for the candy. But, 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. 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.”

The end of the trailer introduces Grant as an orange, green-haired Oompa Loompa, who has a familiar song at the ready. After working with Grant on Paddington 2, King knew he wanted the actor as one of Wonka’s Oompa Loompa pals.

“He’s the funniest person I know,” King says. “It was a very happy moment when you go, ‘Oh, I think your voice can sit with this judgmental, sarcastic, mean-spirited character.’ The gleeful, mischievous delight the Oompa Loompas take in the demise of those kids is so funny. When you read the poems they are so cruel and kind of acerbic. Trying to write down character traits and find their voice outside the songs, I realized, ‘That’s what Hugh sounds like. Hugh is an Oompa Loompa.’”

There’s more delight to come, too. “He wears a series of ridiculous outfits in the film,” King teases. “I think it works so brilliantly. There’s always things where when you’re making anything where you go, ‘OK, I think that’s good, I think that’s good — that’s just right! If no one likes that I don’t care.’ I have 100 percent confidence in Hugh with green hair.”

In order to make Wonka, King bid farewell to his furry friend Paddington. A third film, Paddington in Peru, is currently in the works by director Dougal Wilson. It’s an odd feeling for King, but moving on with his career does come with a certain perk.

“I was keen to do something that wasn’t Paddington,” he says. “I love Paddington very much and it’s very odd, like watching a child go out into the world. Dougal Wilson’s a genius and I’m sure he couldn’t be in better hands, but it is a very odd and not entirely pleasant experience to feel that I’m not there to protect Paddington because I love that character so much. But I also wanted to do something that was just different, from a personal point of view. And to tell people that I like chocolate as well as marmalade. A lot of people have kindly given me marmalade over the years. And I like marmalade, but I really like chocolate.”

From Rolling Stone US.