Transcript: ‘Wonka’, starring Timothée Chalamet

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘‘Wonka’, starring Timothée Chalamet’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. Today for our final episode of the year, we are talking about Wonka the new family film about the early life of the infamous Willy. The film is, of course, inspired originally by Roald Dahl’s books, most notably Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. It is the third film in the Wonka universe. It stars Timothee Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka looking to open his first chocolate factory in the big city and facing a cartel of local evil chocolatiers in his way.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘WONKA’ PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
It is a musical with a number of original songs, and it’s directed by Paul King, who also did Paddington. So today we’ll be talking about what we thought about the film, and let’s just get into it. Joining me in New York is our golden ticket herself, the FT’s US investment correspondent, also a regular culture writer for FT weekend, the great Madison Darbyshire. Hi, Madison.

Madison Darbyshire
Hi Lilah. Thanks for having me.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thanks for being here. And from London, the music maker, the dreamer of dreams. It’s our House and Home editor, Nathan Brooker. Hi Nathan, welcome.

Nathan Brooker
Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I’m done with puns. I would love to get into it. Top line, I’m curious from both of you how we feel about the film. Nathan, let’s start with you. How did you feel? Did you come in wanting to like it? Did you like it? What did you think?

Nathan Brooker
I didn’t come in wanting to like it. I came in not wanting to like it and being slightly annoyed that it had been made.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I’m shocked.

Nathan Brooker
But, you know, you mentioned it’s directed by Paul King. It’s co-written by Paul King and Simon Farnaby, which is the team behind Paddington. And really, it’s a lot more like Paddington than anything else. I thought it was very funny. I thought it was very charming. There are these wonderful little cameos from much loved British comedians and actors, and it kind of won me over, I have to say.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Nice. What about you, Madison?

Madison Darbyshire
That’s so interesting that you thought it reminded you of Paddington, because I . . . my biggest qualm, I guess, is Paddington is a movie that has a very clear moral message. And I think all of Roald Dahl’s books are parables. But I left kind of feeling a little bit like the film was trying to cover a lot of ground, and it didn’t have that same, like, very clear moral backbone that Paddington did and that I was really craving. But what I actually found most interesting about the version with Timothee or Timothee is I felt like it was actually a lot more in conversation with the original, like Mel Stuart, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, rather than the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So it was more in conversation with the 1971 version than with the book.

Madison Darbyshire
Yeah. Exactly. And there were actually a lot of like very deliberate transplants from that film into this film. And so I was just curious about why they felt so strongly about doing the prequel almost for the movie version rather than Roald Dahl’s book version of Willy Wonka.

Nathan Brooker
I think that’s an interesting point. To be honest, I don’t quite see that there’s this great chasm between the ‘71 version and the book. I know that Dahl himself kind of hated it and hated Gene Wilder. But I think in tone, it’s rather like the novel in certain respects. I mean, the world of this new Wonka is it’s a little bit German. It’s a little bit kind of like Prague. It’s a bit like Paris, but it’s sort of built on this sort of sea of rapacious capitalism. And I think Dahl would have very much appreciated that. There’s a moment when Wonka, young Wonka gets fined three sovereigns for daydreaming. That very much feels in spirit of the book. And it’s this place which is kind of populated by villains and gargoyles, and there’s a corrupt chief of police. I mean, I think Dahl would like all of this stuff. There’s a fat joke in it. He’ll definitely like that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, so let’s get into that a little bit, because this is a story that has been told and retold a ton of times. So we just mentioned the original Roald Dahl book. That’s from 1964. And then the 1971 movie, the first movie that features Gene Wilder. Both of those are total children’s classics. Then there’s also a pretty dark 2005 version made by Tim Burton. That’s the one starring Johnny Depp. Madison, can you set us up for this whole Willy Wonka world? Like for anyone who hasn’t read the book or watched the movies?

Madison Darbyshire
So Willy Wonka, we learn in the Charlie and Chocolate Factory book is the greatest chocolatier of all time. He makes things that explode the mind, delight the senses. And he’s also a huge mystery. Nobody knows anything about who he is as a person. He is truly eccentric when we do meet him. And this movie, Wonka in 2023 is the origin story of that man. And so we meet Timothee Chalamet as Wonka, kind of when he’s coming back from years of exploration, heading to this place that he’s dreamed about his entire life to open a chocolate shop. And we see that he has the potential to do that, except he runs into the physical embodiment of capitalism, which is the chocolate cartel, right? That’s like skimming chocolate off the top in this giant vault. And there’s a lot of humour in that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And is sort of in cahoots with the chief of police.

Madison Darbyshire
And is in cahoots with the chief of police who has a sweet tooth that is weaponised. And I have feelings about that. And then I think they borrow very heavily from Les Miserables and have a whole master of the house, innkeeper and her husband slash partner.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Nathan, do you want to jump in and explain the inn very briefly and the characters there?

Nathan Brooker
The inn is controlled by Olivia Colman and Tom Davis, and they are these two absolute dark characters. They’re these gargoyles, and there’s this wonderful kind of homage to the 1971 film where Gene Wilder gets them to sign this contract before they enter the Chocolate Factory. Well, here there’s a long contract that Olivia Colman gets Timothee Chalamet to sign, and he’s kind of tricked into indentured servitude, and he has to kind of work his way out. And he gets the other people that are the kind of the indentured servants alongside him to create a chocolate shop in spite of the efforts of the cartel to crush his little chocolatey dreams.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, exactly. Yeah. OK. So just to make it clear. So that is a reversal, like in the originals, Willy Wonka is the one that has indentured servants. He has the Oompa Loompas. Which are these little gnome like workers? They’re like orange faces, green hair paid in chocolate. But then there’s this other reversal, too, which is that, at least with the films, Willy Wonka as an adult, he, like, doesn’t really like children. He’s kind of this grumpy, weird, sort of moralistic man who seems a little disgusted with kids. And then in this movie, when you meet young Willy Wonka, it’s, as you said, Madison. He’s like very earnest and hopeful and dreamy. And honestly, when I watched this version, I kept thinking of him as this weird combination of like Santa Claus and a charismatic CEO. And kind of dope, like a sweet dope.

Nathan Brooker
It’s interesting you describe him as a Santa figure and a CEO. I was watching this and I was thinking, I don’t want to get all armchair psychologist on you, but I was like, Wonka is Dahl. Dahl is Wonka, right? He is this kind of charismatic auteur. He builds these fantastical products in these kind of fantastical palettes of pure imagination. Children all around the world hoover them up greedily. He delights in delighting them, but at the same time, he’s kind of repulsed by some of their aspects and their desires and revolted by them and kind of feels the need to punish them.

Madison Darbyshire
Wants to teach them a lesson.

Nathan Brooker
He wants to teach them a lesson.

Madison Darbyshire
The book is just, you’ll remember from the book, it’s just like a series of parables. It’s a series. You’re dealing with greed, you’re dealing with gluttony, you’re dealing with sloth. He’s going through child after child and eliminating them based on their fatal flaw. And what you get at the end is Charlie.

Nathan Brooker
It’s Dante’s Inferno. It’s exactly what it is.

Madison Darbyshire
Yeah.

Nathan Brooker
Each of the little sinners, they’re led through this factory deeper and deeper. And each of these little sinners have their sins turned back on themselves. And then they, you know, they get to the centre and they burst through the roof. They go up to purgatory or wherever or whatever happens at the end of the Divine Comedy.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I want to ask you both about what you thought of the music.

Madison Darbyshire
Well, I was fully surprised. I don’t know what I thought, but there’s not a song in the trailer, Lilah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I know I didn’t realise it would be a musical either. I loved the music. I thought it was catchy. There was a lot of original music. I was thinking about my nieces and nephews getting that soundtrack and listening to it on repeat, and I found myself leaving and thinking, hey, this credit song is like a pretty good song.

Nathan Brooker
Yeah, I thought the music was pretty, pretty good, actually. It’s written by Neil Hannon, actually, the music for this film, who is in a band, The Divine Comedy. So there you go, back to Dante’s Inferno. Yeah, that was kind of funny, right? There are some great lines in it. You’ve got to try these chocolates. They’ll make your eyes pop out your sockalates. Put your hands into your pockalates. It’s genius.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘WONKA’ PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s a kids’ film after all.

Nathan Brooker
Right. It’s a kids’ film. It’s fun.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And what about Timothee Chalamet?

Madison Darbyshire
Well, I thought it was an interesting choice that this teen heart-throb took on, like, the most sexless role of all time.

Lilah Raptopoulos
But I always thought of Timothee Chalamet as this sort of, like, young, ironic kid.

Madison Darbyshire
He’s the guy I would be smoking outside class, right? He’s kind of a handsome degenerate.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Trying to be cool. Kind of like trying to be a little above you. But then in the film, you’re right. He was so earnest in the film. Did you disagree?

Nathan Brooker
No, no, I completely agree with you. I think he makes a pretty good fist of it. I think he’s rather a fine actor and I think he’s got very good comic timing. I’m not sure he’s quite got the kind of movement or the chops for a big song and dance number. He’s not really Gene Kelly.

Madison Darbyshire
Well, let’s remember that this director was used to directing an animated bear.

Nathan Brooker
And does so with aplomb.

Madison Darbyshire
Yes. And Timothee was stepping into very specific blocking. But I thought he really shone. The moments where I thought, oh, I understand why Timothee Chalamet is a movie star were the intimate moments, where it was close up on his face. He got to be a human. He got to kind of shine through the facade of the maniacal Wonka. And in that way, I really, I loved those parts. And that’s where I found his casting to be the strongest.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I would love to move on to talk about how this fits into the Roald Dahl universe. We’ve talked a little bit about it, but Wonka is the 20th Roald Dahl film adaptation and we keep returning to him. This is a guy who made books that were dark and weird. Kids get eaten by giants, turned into blueberries, flung around by their pigtails. And when we look back today, some of it has been deemed problematic, but it struck a chord with children around the world. They have sold more than 300mn copies worldwide. And I want to talk first about how we feel about the Roald Dahl universe. Madison, what about you? How do you feel about Roald Dahl?

Madison Darbyshire
I think one thing that we take for granted is that kids are very macabre and they will just say the quiet part out loud. And Roald Dahl really spoke to that impulse and kind of gave, he kind of validated that kids could handle the gritty, weird, dirty stuff or they could understand, like, bizarre characterisations and their morals. Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a dark book. The kids all almost die.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What about you, Nathan? I heard a rumour that you played Mike Teavee of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame in a play.

Madison Darbyshire
What?

Nathan Brooker
Thanks for bringing it up.

Lilah Raptopoulos
No problem. Please say more. Were you a fan? Yeah. What were your thoughts on Roald Dahl as a kid?

Nathan Brooker
Oh, well, I’ll. I’ll build up to my defining portrait of Mike Teavee. I absolutely loved Dahl. And exactly what Madison was saying. When I was a kid, the books we had in the house were like Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter and so much children’s fiction. It’s all a bit kind of Sunday school, right? But Dahl was completely different. Dahl was kind of cruel and rude and funny. He was so funny. The Twits is still, I think, one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. And you know, that sense of the macabre, you know, people putting their glass eyes in beer glasses and feeding each other worms and tricking people into thinking they’ve got the shrinks. The cruelty in Dahl really spoke to me as a child. That’s what I think.

Madison Darbyshire
But at the same time, there’s this constant, overarching sense of decency, right?

Nathan Brooker
Absolutely correct.

Madison Darbyshire
The hero always wins, and the hero is always the person who asks for the least, the person who does the right thing, who shows kindness.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And the kid like you. Right? Like, there is a sense to me that, like, the books were all looking up from my angle and not like looking down from an adult’s angle. It was like, we’re going to be gross and that’s fine. And like, you’re doing great. Just keep being good and being you and you’ll be fine. Even despite these nasty, gross people trying to keep you down. How did you both feel that this film fit into that spirit?

Madison Darbyshire
Well, his overarching thesis, right, is always hell is other people. We’re all just to navigate that. And here’s I’m going to teach you a lesson because all these people who transgress, they’ll get theirs. And so I feel like in that way the film rises to the occasion in that it’s the good people who take care of each other, who have an honourable goal, who will succeed in the end. And it’s the villainous, you know, consortium of evil capitalists and the police, the corrupt police officers who will suffer in the end.

Nathan Brooker
Yeah. The the world was kind of Dahl-esque, right? I definitely thought that it had elements of it, but yeah, Wonka’s too cuddly. Right? And that’s fine. That’s absolutely fine.

Madison Darbyshire
He’s too hot.

Nathan Brooker
He’s too pretty and too cuddly.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Let’s move on to a bigger question, which is why does this film exist and should it? If you look at this cynically, you can say that this film is packaging everything that’s going on in Hollywood may be wrong with Hollywood right now. Too many biopics, too many remakes and prequels, too many cool, indie people like Greta Gerwig making commercial films like Barbie. And this could be that, like on steroids. This is kind of a Mad Libs of that: remake of a book, a biopic of sorts, a prequel, cool indie Timothee Chalamet. Does this bother us or do we not care? Nathan, what do you think?

Nathan Brooker
Well, it is way too good for it to not exist. Although I walk through the tube station sometimes and see that they have made another remake and I kind of pinched the bridge of my nose and think, why? What a waste of money and talent. This, however, was a kind of, this is a completely new movie, right, with a completely new story. And it’s told with wit and humour and skill. And if it gets people into the cinema, that’s going to be better, right? This isn’t just IP for IP’s sake. This is kind of something else, I think. And it’s Christmas, so why not?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. In our Monday episode, our colleague Matt Vella said that sometimes these films feel like they’re mining our 80s and 90s childhoods to sell tickets. I didn’t really feel, I mean, I’m sure it was in a way. And I was, I walked in really wanting to be mad about it because it was going to do that and I was tired of movies doing that and I want original films and whatever. But I was within 5 minutes. Totally turned around.

Madison Darbyshire
I mean, who grew up on the 70s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, like, wanted to recreate that experience?

Lilah Raptopoulos
What do you mean?

Madison Darbyshire
That was so traumatising as a child. Like, watching it again as an adult, I was like, oh, I understand Gene Wilder. When you’re a single person in your thirties and you have to deal with everyone else’s children all the time, you realise the extent to which they can test your patience and decency and you really understand his kind of dry humour around the violence that occurs to these children. But as a child, like, there’s just an onslaught to the senses. That film did not leave me with an overarching love for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory franchise.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s interesting.

Nathan Brooker
May I suggest, Madison, that you did not see the 1999 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Empire Theatre in Southend-on-Sea? Because I think that one of, the performance of Mike Teavee would have really changed your mind.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, this is your play.

Madison Darbyshire
Nathan, there’s nothing that you have not successfully changed my mind on when you set your heart to it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Also, if you could get us a VHS of that play, we would happily digitise it.

Nathan Brooker
Absolutely not.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Nathan, Madison, thank you so much. We will be back in just a second for More or Less.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Welcome back to Life and Art. This is More or Less the part of the show where each guest says something they want more of or less of culturally. Nathan, let’s start with you. What do you want less of?

Nathan Brooker
I would like fewer perfume adverts on TV. It is Christmas time and they are on every other advert and they are all the same. They are joyless, humourless bits of branded entertainment and they are all the same. And they are all so stale. They are years and years old. They did the same ones. When did Charlize Theron walk out of that gold swimming pool? Who was the president when she first did that? Was it Bush?

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think it was Bush. I always thought of those as like trying to be quite sexy.

Nathan Brooker
Oh, they’re dreadful. And the Natalie Portman running off into the, off the jetty. I just can’t handle anymore. I can’t handle anymore. Timmy’s in one.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It is directed by Scorsese.

Nathan Brooker
That is not directed by Scorsese.

Madison Darbyshire
It is. Hold on.

Lilah Raptopoulos
How would we have Timothee Chalamet for this film if it weren’t for perfume?

Nathan Brooker
It’s five seconds long and it’s just night in white satin. And he’s just looking at the camera. That’s it. That’s not even the worst one. There’s, the worst ones are the ones that have all this terrible kind of fake story attached to them.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so fewer perfume ads. Madison, what about you?

Madison Darbyshire
I want less craft cocktails.

Nathan Brooker
Seconded.

Madison Darbyshire
And more nostalgia cocktails. And did you know that there’s, this is a whole thing. So craft cocktails are, like, the reason that we’ve forgotten all about really great classic cocktails, because there’s so much pressure on restaurants and bartenders to only feature originals on their menu. So there are hundreds of truly delightful cocktails that we have collectively forgotten about as a culture because we’re like, we’ve just been inured and have gotten used to tinctures and smoked hazelnuts. I just am really ready for like a cosmopolitan.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Madison has just written a piece about the Cosmopolitan and the return of the Cosmopolitan in New York City. We’ll put it in the show notes. I want more being bored. I ended up writing a column this week about it because I recently realised how unfamiliar the feeling of boredom has become to me by turning my phone off for a couple of hours. And it really alarmed me and I got to do it more so over the next week between Christmas and New Year’s, go stare into space. Go for a walk without your phone. Go look at a painting for an hour. Be bored.

Madison Darbyshire
Live like it’s 1995.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Go kick a rock.

Nathan Brooker
I wish I had time to be bored. I literally just said that. And that was my mother speaking in 1996. That was, I was channelling her. I’ve become my mother.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, haven’t we all? And on that note, Madison, Nathan, thank you so much. This is so much fun.

Madison Darbyshire
Thank you, Lilah.

Nathan Brooker
Thank you very much.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I highly recommend you check out the show notes. We have links to everything that we mentioned today there, and all the links to FT.com Will get you past the paywall. In the show notes we also have discount codes for a subscription to the Financial Times, and as always, ways to keep in touch with me and with the show on email, X and Instagram. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and this is my talented team, Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Brene Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Thank you for an incredible year. Have a very happy holiday and wonderful New Year and we’ll find each other again on January 5th. In the meantime, we will be dropping some guest episodes on our feed.