Timothée Chalamet was offered the role of Willy Wonka without an audition after the director saw "his high school musical performances on YouTube"

Despite rumors over the years that Warner Bros. courted Donald Glover, Ezra Miller and Ryan Gosling to play Willy Wonka, only Timothée Chalamet received the offer to direct director Paul King’s prequel musical comedy, “Wonka.” And Chalamet didn’t even need to audition. King recently told Rolling Stone that he was a “stan” of Chalamet and therefore knew the actor had the singing and dancing skills to play Wonka.

“It was a direct offer because he’s awesome 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, as Timmy Chalamet, that he could sing and dance very well.

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King 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 said, “I’d really like to show people I can do this.” »

“Wonka” is a “real” musical that feels like “a really fun hat tip to the golden age of MGM musicals,” King said of the project. The director is best known for directing the beloved “Paddington” films, but he said “Wonka” had a much different tone.

“Certainly, I tried to have darker characters than what you find in a ‘Paddington’ movie, for example,” King told Rolling Stone. “It’s a crueler, meaner world that Willy Wonka finds himself in because that’s the kind of town Charlie grows up in. Unlike ‘Paddington.’ world, not everyone is nice in a Roald Dahl world. I definitely have to play with these grotesque ideas, but I hope I don’t harm a generation of children.

“Wonka” is released in theaters nationwide on December 15 by Warner Bros.

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