Wonka' stars Timothée Chalamet & Hugh Grant | AP extended interview

It was a real giraffe. He's an actor. Yeah, this is his fourth film. But his real love is the theatre, he was telling me. We used to have lunch. It began with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I personally think the cinemas have to improve. I think they've got to turn the bloody sound down. Why is it so loud in there? Did you find that? Or am I just old? It's unbearable. My children cry. Anyway, whatever. Do you want to get that? No, sorry, sorry. Come on, let's get it. It should be off, it should be off. Okay. So you're the funny little man who's been following me. Funny little man? How dare you? I will have you know that I am a perfectly respectable size for an Oompa Loompa. At number what now? It feels, from my perspective, very old school and sort of a cinema lost of Fred Astaire. And just very joyful and generous. And 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. And as an audience member, it's very generous to receive, I think. My sister danced at the School of American Ballet in New York. And I vividly remember because they sort of struggled to get any sort of male dancers there at the time, at least. And I remember them trying to hook me then. But I never really had the bug. I don't know. But when you see great dancing or great musical theater, it's unlike anything else, I think. I like personally to bring misery onto all film sets if I possibly can. I'm miserable myself. I like to spread negativity. On this one, I didn't entirely succeed because he's irrepressible, Paul King. He basically is Paddington in a human costume. And he brings all that niceness. And he actually likes people. What a perv. You know, I wonder, Hugh, if you didn't have this direct line and relationship with Paul, would your agents have ever sent you an Oompa Loompa role to even consider? Would that have even crossed your path? Oh, yes, I think so. They know that I'm into the freak show stage of my career now. It's all I can get. Timothy, how did your friends and family sort of react when you said that you were thinking about signing on to this? Excited, definitely. My mom was very excited. Mom, who showed me the Gene Wilder version, very young. And it's the second big movie I've done. I'm talking on a large scale. So this is of a way different tone and flavor. But it was equally fun to work on in a much different way. Huh. What is it? Nothing. Well, it's obviously something because you said, huh. Forget it. Very well. There was a rather unpopular little man in Scotland I knew called Archie with red hair. He was much shorter than anyone else. He had a short man complex, a bit bossy and not much loved. Like my poor Oompa Loompa, he's not really loved by his own tribe. He's been slung out for being a useless guard of their cocoa beans. And there's a tragedy underneath him. I'm sure that came through. It's a synthesis of my face photographed by lots of tiny cameras attached to a sort of helmet and CGI. So I never had to do hair and makeup or costume on this. It's one of the joys of a film like this. Lovely. But there are plenty of downsides. Paul King's mad, insane, and he can't stop perfecting his films. It has to be dragged out of his hands physically to get released at all. So he kept adjusting Oompa Loompa scenes over and over again. Took me years. Drove me mad. My family begging me to stop acting altogether because it makes me so tense and grumpy. Actually, one of my little girls is studying Oompa Loompas in her classroom. How can that be? I mean, what does that mean? What does that mean? I saw the drawings all over the wall. Anyway, whatever. Do you want to get that? No, sorry, sorry. Come on, let's get it. It should be off. No, the sets, the amazing sets and the tactility. They're all real, right? There's no green screen. Very little green screen. It's a dream. You know, that's what you want as an actor is to have it practically there in front of you. And this is, you know, David Heyman's not the director on this. He's a producer. But these films he's produced, like Barbie, like Harry Potter, like Wonka, they're just they're world building. They're very involved. And it's the opposite of acting across nothing in green screen, you know. There's something a bit, something wrong comes through in green screen scenes, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. A bit soulless. Yeah. A bit too digital. Bring back analogue, I said. Yes, the giraffe, I imagine, was just a real giraffe. It was a real giraffe. He's an actor. Yeah, this is his fourth film. But his real love is the theatre, he was telling me. We used to have lunch. He began with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then he toured a bit. But anyway, he's, you know, he was great in the movie. Greetings to you all. My name is Willy Wonka. I have always thought that films which don't, if you don't mean the film, if the filmmaker doesn't mean it from their heart, it shows up, it goes. And one of the things that made all 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 and falling out of love and being traumatised by it. He meant it. Paul King means all this, the message of Paddington and the message of this one, you know, family matters and it's the people you share your chocolate with. It's not a trite, tacked-on motto. It comes from his heart. You know, retelling stories of beloved characters, people's switch is immediately into sceptical, as you just put it. But, you know, Paul King means it, as Hugh so wonderfully just put it. He really means it. I would be equally suspicious too, but the story... And grew up and loved Roald Dahl and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Passionate about it. So it's not just, well, this looks like a franchise we could make some bucks off. Yeah, he lives it. He lives it. He worked on this for three and a half or four years or something. And I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and people will think what they will when they see it, but it reminds me when we were making Little Women and Greta Gerwig said 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 or something like that. She said something along those lines. And I think Paul really did that here. To me, there's nothing sadder than people watching films, you know, on their telephone. Yeah, I think that would be great. But I personally think the cinemas have to improve. I think they've got to turn the bloody sound down. Why is it so loud in there? Did you find that? Or am I just old? Unbearable. My children cry. What did you think last night? Too loud? Perfect. But too cold. Let's sort out the temperature.