Pure imagination awaits in ‘Wonka’
Filmmaker went back to Dahl’s book to create origin tale
Hugh Grant learned some years ago that if a filmmaker doesn’t make something from the heart, it shows. The films that work best, and are most loved, he has found, are the ones that the directors really meant.
It applied to his romantic comedies with Richard Curtis as well as “Paddington 2.” And he’s pretty sure it’s true of “Wonka.” The lavish big-screen musical about a young Willy Wonka — before Charlie, before the chocolate factory — is dancing into theaters today with its heart on its velvet sleeve.
Like the “Paddington” movies, “Wonka” was dreamed up by writer and director Paul King, a lifelong Roald Dahl fan. With a beloved troupe of actors
(which includes Grant, Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Keegan-Michael Key, Natasha Rothwell, Paterson Joseph and newcomer Calah Lane), its vibrant costumes and sets, and a contagious “let’s put on a show” energy, “Wonka” feels like a modern homage to classic MGM productions of the 1940s.
But King wasn’t so sure about “Wonka” at first. No one was, except for producer David Heyman, whose credits include “Harry Potter,” “Paddington” and “Barbie.” King worried that like so many other “brands,” a young Willy Wonka movie was something devised in a boardroom with visions of “12,000 movies and a TV show.”
Then he went back to the book, which he’d read so many times as a child. This time he found not just a great character in Willy Wonka, an unapologetically flamboyant dreamer whom Dahl also seemed a bit obsessed with, but also a breakthrough about his work.
“I realized how informative Dahl had been to everything that I love about family movies. They’ve got these great heightened characters, but there’s a real beating heart to them,” King said. “It was like, oh this is the mothership.”
And, with his “Paddington 2” co-writer Simon Farnaby, King would spend years toiling over what they’re calling a companion piece to the film starring Gene Wilder, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Chalamet, the Oscarnominated actor of “Call Me By Your Name” and “Dune,” wasn’t technically a song-and-dance man when he signed on to play Wonka. But King was convinced that he was the perfect person to balance “sincere” and “ridiculous” thanks in part to his memorable performance in Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird.”
For Chalamet, “Wonka” was a chance to do something a bit different, on a grand scale. He also understands audiences being a little skeptical of any spinoff of a beloved character, but he takes comfort in something Gerwig said while they were making “Little Women.” He recalled her telling him “something like, ‘For anybody that’s saying that a lot of versions of this have been made, you know, when it’s done well, no one complains,’ ” he said. “I think Paul really did that here.”
Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman had to teach him how to hit marks and match eyelines. But Braugher is nevertheless masterful playing what in the film is presented as a highly unusual character — a Black man who had always been free — yet is actually more representative of the real-life soldiers, since the regiment recruited mainly in the North.
Watch the film with that in mind, as Searles — at first effete, bookish, utterly unequipped for war — breaks down during training before embarking on a most harrowing journey. Braugher’s portrayal signaled the arrival of an exciting new talent. Stream it on Pluto. Rent it on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu and YouTube.
“The Tuskegee Airmen” (1995): Black men in the
Plus, in “Wonka,” he’d get the bonus of the “classic thespian challenge” of singing and dancing. “It’s not necessarily what is in vogue as far as like behavioral acting and very natural storytelling, but when done right, it’s very joyful to do,” Chalamet said.
In addition to “Pure Imagination” and “Oompa Loompa” from the 1971 film, the Divine Comedy frontman Neil Hannon wrote six original songs, while Christopher Gatelli
U.S. military were still battling racism in World War II — especially the first Black fighter pilots. Here, playing the real-life Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Braugher delivers a great speech in his defining scene. Testifying at a congressional hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, with politicians asking whether this “experiment” should continue, he delivers salient counterarguments and points out the fallacy of theirs: “How do I feel about my country, and how does my country feel about me? Are we only to be Americans when the mood suits you?” It’s an impeccable performance — one that earned an Emmy nomination. Stream it on Max.
“Men of a Certain Age” (2009-11):
Braugher got his first chance to play against type when Ray Romano and Mike Royce recruited him to replace Wendell Pierce in this TNT dramedy. (Pierce had gone on to do “Treme.”) This series gave Braugher a chance to demonstrate
oversaw the choreography.
Though Chalamet had done musicals during high school, he didn’t fully appreciate the exhaustive rigor of it. He’d also staged big battle sequences — in the sand in “Dune” and wearing chain mail armor in the mud in “The King” — and trained for “Wonka” for months, but he was still not fully prepared for how taxing “take 13” of a largescale dance number would be.
And Chalamet’s co-stars both his comedy chops and his soliloquy skills. The show, which co-starred Romano and Scott Bakula, was a sort of male version of “And Just Like That …” long before it was trendy to examine midlife friendships. (Instead of menopause, these characters dished on colonoscopies.) As car salesman Owen Thoreau Jr., Braugher gave us an intimate look at the disappointments of middle age — being humiliated by relatives, bosses and peers; being betrayed by his own body — and earned two more Emmy nominations for his work. Stream it on Max.
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (2013-21):
After “Men of a Certain Age” was canceled, producer Michael Schur reached out to Braugher about appearing in, of all things, a sitcom. Casting him as the stoic Capt. Raymond Holt, an openly gay cop in Brooklyn’s 99th precinct, was a clever repurposing of Braugher’s intense gravitas in previous were in awe of how he was able to be both committed to his craft and fun with which to work.
“It’s hard to make fun of him,” said Key, who plays the chief of police. “He was a good leader for being, as we like to say in the business, No. 1 on the call sheet … there’s a lot of responsibility.”
Colman agreed, adding that if that person is “obnoxious or difficult to work with, everyone’s unhappy.”
On “Wonka,” however, “everyone was deliriously happy … because he appreciated what everyone did, knew everyone’s names, was always there on time, knew his words and was kind,” said Colman, who plays the scheming Mrs. Scrubitt. “I felt sort of useless in his presence because I’m quite bumbly and quite badly behaved on set.”
Perhaps the most inspired twist of “Wonka” is Grant, an actor made famous for his good looks and charm and romantic TV detective roles such as “Homicide.” And his approach to this workplace comedy was to take his role seriously — talking to actual precinct commanders, questioning directors and producers about his character’s motivations, and rehearsing for endless hours. This hard work paid off: Braugher became a fan favorite, received four Emmy nominations for best supporting actor, and was surely one of the reasons NBC picked up the show when Fox canceled it. Vindication! Stream it on Peacock.
“BoJack Horseman” (2017):
In the fourth season of this absurd animated comedy, Braugher channeled his best Barack Obama — and made the most of his exasperated deadpan — by playing the sitting governor of California, Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz. He’s a capable, if slightly boring, leader — he’d rather focus on substantive policy than publicity stunts — which makes leads, who is playing an Oompa-Loompa.
King had already introduced Grant to a new generation by having him play Phoenix Buchanan in “Paddington 2.” When King was rereading “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” he found “Hugh’s voice” coming into his head for the devious little workers.
“They’re so biting and satirical and funny, but they’ve got a real kind of edge to them … and they take an enormous delight in these children’s demise,” King said. “I had this vision of Hugh Grant, you know, this high with orange skin and green hair. And once you have that picture come into your mind, you have to try and get it out there.”
In recent years, Grant has traded his romantic lead persona for more eccentric character roles. It is, what he calls, the “freak show stage” of his career. “That’s all I can get,” he said.
Grant is also a selfproclaimed miserable curmudgeon, which he’ll say with a straight face right him vulnerable to flashier celebrity opponents. When one of these dubious rivals proposes bypassing an actual election and replacing it with a ski-race challenge, Braugher’s character hits a comic peak, only to be surpassed by his glee when the election finally takes place. Stream it on Netflix.
“The Good Fight” (2022):
After deadpanning for years on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Braugher got a more flamboyant character to play when he joined the sixth and final season of this witty spinoff to “The Good Wife.” As Ri’Chard Lane, a new partner at a Black law firm, Braugher was extravagantly extroverted and soon a source of simmering tension. His Ri’Chard also had a vulnerable side, which made him more endearing (but more suspicious, too). If you have time for only one episode, watch “The End of a Saturday” — it’s among the shortest in the series, it’s one of the best and you even get to hear Braugher sing. Stream before saying something completely contradictory. In his interviews, he’s witty and wry and reliably unreliable. Some are obvious jokes. Others you’d hesitate to dismiss wholly.
Yet when he talks about King and “Wonka” and it all being from the heart, something melts away.
“One of the things that made those romantic comedies that I made with Richard Curtis work, apart from the fact that he’s very good at writing comedy, was that he meant it. He really cared about love, and he was always falling in love, falling out of love and being traumatized by it. But he meant it,” Grant said. “Paul King means all this. The message of ‘Paddington’ and the message of this one, you know, family matters, the people you share your chocolate with. It’s not a trite, tacked on motto. It comes from his heart.”
And it’s easy to believe that Grant, miserable though he may be, actually means it too. it on Paramount+.
In his last film role, Braugher once again played a reallife person, Dean Baquet, former executive editor of The New York Times. Braugher didn’t meet Baquet until the film was wrapped, but he prepped for the role by watching YouTube videos and documentaries such as “The Fourth Estate” (a process he talked about in interviews with The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair). His Baquet is steady and unflappable, especially when dealing with a pugnacious Harvey Weinstein during a Times investigation of the film mogul’s sexual misconduct. Braugher calmly established Baquet’s command of the relationship, addressing the producer’s telephonic dodges in one scene and shutting him down altogether in another. It’s a slow-burn performance, one that left Braugher fans wanting more.