Actor Playing Willy Wonka at Disaster Event Speaks Out: “It Was Heartbreaking and Dangerous”

One of the actors hired to play Willy Wonka at an “immersive experience” fan event that became a viral sensation for all the wrong reasons is speaking out about what actually went down behind the scenes.

The U.K. fan attraction Willy’s Chocolate Experience — which was inspired by Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but not officially tied to the book or movies — promised to transport ticket buyers into a fantastical world. The organized used spectacular artificial intelligence-generated photos to lure customers to a barren and depressing warehouse (some photos below) that left parents furious and children in tears, with police being called to the scene.

The Independent spoke to actor Paul Connell, who was one of three hired to play the whimsical chocolatier at the event. Connell revealed that he was hired at the very last minute and was sent a script that was “15 pages of AI-generated gibberish of me just monologuing these mad things.”

“The bit that got me was where I had to say, ‘There is a man we don’t know his name. We know him as the Unknown. This Unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls,’” he recalled. “It was terrifying for the kids. Is he an evil man who makes chocolate or is the chocolate itself evil?”

In either case, the event apparently didn’t have any chocolate despite being titled a “Chocolate Experience.” “We were told to give [the kids] one jelly bean and a quarter cup of lemonade,” Connell said. “No chocolate at the chocolate experience. There was supposed to be a chocolate fountain somewhere but I never saw it.”

Connell was also supposed to use a vacuum cleaner at the end of his monologue to suck the evil “Unknown Man” out of the factory walls, but the event didn’t even have a vacuum cleaner so he had to frantically improvise.

The actor ended up playing Wonka for nearly four hours straight without a break while organizers urged him to move kids through the warehouse faster. “I didn’t know where I ended and Wonka began,” he said. “I was losing my mind by that point.”

Eventually, parents got quite upset and the event descended into chaos. Connell decided to quit along with some Oompa Loompas.

“There was an angry mob at the door not being let in,” he said. “People were shouting, people who put on the event were crying. There were arguments, people running around everywhere — the set had been trashed … It was actually getting quite dangerous for us. But it was heartbreaking, to be honest. There were kids in costumes better than ours, crying … We as actors were brought in last minute and we just did our best for the kids.”

Connell also noted the word “contract” was misspelled on his contract.

The Guardian previously reported that event organizers refunded tickets and apologized for the “very stressful and frustrating day,” telling customers, “Unfortunately, last minute we were let down in many areas of our event and tried our best to continue on and push through and now realise we probably should have cancelled first thing this morning instead.”