Summary
Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa Wonka casting is defended by the film’s director. Starring Timothée Chalamet as the candy-maker from Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wonka is an origin-story film showing the rise of famous chocolatier Willy Wonka and how he came to meet the Oompa Loompas. Wonka is helmed by Paddington director Paul King, and its screenplay is co-adapted by King and Simon Farnaby.
Following the casting controversy, King defends his decision to cast Grant in the role of the Oompa Loompas in the upcoming Wonka. As King tells Total Film (via Games Radar), the director imagined the Oompa Loompas as “these impossibly tiny beings.” Having worked with Grant on Paddington 2, King knew that the actor was “the funniest, most sarcastic sh*t” that he has worked with, thus would be able to take on the classic bite-sized characters. Check out the full quote from King below:
“I was enchanted by the idea of these impossibly tiny beings, far smaller even than the child-sized me. The voice and the attitude of the Oompa Loompa came from revisiting the books – long songs full of humour, sarcasm, superiority and scorn. So it was really just thinking about that character – someone who can be a real sh*t. And I went, ‘Ah, Hugh [Grant]!’ Because he’s the funniest, most sarcastic shit that I’ve ever met! We’d been there before with Paddington 2. I had to write him this awkward letter, saying, ‘You’re good at playing washed-up, old hams…'” “Once you see Hugh Grant as an 18-inch high orange man with green hair, “you go, ‘Ah, yes. I know what Oompa Loompas are. It all makes perfect sense.'”
Hugh Grant’s Wonka Casting Controversy Explained
While Wonka is in many ways a promising adaptation, Grant’s Oompa Loompa casting remains highly controversial. The principal complaint stems from the many believing that Wonka should have cast an actor who had dwarfism. Through the use of CGI, Grant will be made to look smaller for the role. This can be an issue for actors with dwarfism, as some already feel “pushed out of the industry,” as actor George Coppen put it.
Wonka is not the only major production to cast actors as characters who could be portrayed as by actros with dwarfism. Disney’s Snow White decided to pivot the name away from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and turn the seven dwarf characters into unspecified magical beings. Disney, like Warner Bros. Discovery did with Wonka, did not cast actors with dwarfism and and instead found a new way to reinterpret the roles.
By casting Grant, Warner Bros. Discovery created an avoidable controversy. Both Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cast actors with dwarfism in the Oompa Loompa roles, so by choosing Grant, King and the casting team are also going against tradition.Unfortunately, the casting might not sit well with those who feel continuously mistreated and underrepresented within the industry.
Source: Total Film (via Games Radar)
Key Release Dates
