Remember Timothée Chalamet’s rapping alter ego ‘Lil Timmy Tim?’ Turns out ‘Wonka’ director Paul King is a big fan of him.
King opens up about how the Oscar-nominated actor was cast for the film’s titular role, revealing that it was an easy process—thanks to Chalamet’s viral LaGuardia High School rap videos. The director claims that the 27-year-old actor did not audition to portray the young Willy Wonka for the prequel musical film because of the “absurd” fanbase for his talent.
In fact, King claims that no one auditioned for the role, despite reports that Warner Bros. assessed Donald Glover, Ryan Gosling, and Ezra Miller to star in the film before Chalamet was cast in 2021.
“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. “So I knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.”
He knew of the actor’s talent from several videos of teenage Chalamet performing onstage as a student for the musical “Sweet Charity” and rapping as ‘Lil Timmy Tim’ to a “statistics” song, which he reportedly did as a school assignment.
King admits that he knew that Chalamet had the ability, but didn’t realize how competent he was. He said, “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.’”
With ‘Wonka’ helmed as a musical, King reveals that it was a “really fun challenge,” saying, “Because the film is set in the late ‘40s, it felt like a really fun hat off to the golden age of MGM musicals.”
‘Wonka’ tells the origin story of Roald Dahl’s iconic character from the esteemed children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The movie also stars Hugh Grant as a dancing Oompa Loompa.
The first trailer for ‘Wonka’ was released on July 12.
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