Wonka: Timothée Chalamet's Gene Wilder Homage Is So Tiny You Likely Missed It
Whoever tackles the role of Willy Wonka has a massive mountain to climb. After all, Gene Wilder already delivered a Wonka for the ages way back in 1971's "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."
Timothée Chalamet seems to be well aware of this, seeing as he incorporated certain parts of Wilder's performance into his own in "Wonka." In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Chalamet revealed that he honored the original eccentric chocolatier with a neat little Wilder-inspired physical trick that he considers a personal favorite among the film's abundant dance moves.
"I mean, it's so slight as to be imperceptible, so I'm wary to like," he said. "But just going down the stairs in the opening number and there was that homage to Gene Wilder. I don't know if anyone picked up on it. But he goes down the stairs, he pops back up... That's way harder than it looks!"
Wonka pays tribute to Wilder's stair moves and cane trickery
The stair moment Timothée Chalamet paid subtle tribute to in "Wonka" is from the iconic "Pure Imagination" scene in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." In the scene, Gene Wilder's Wonka sings a song to introduce the Golden Ticket winners to his world of wonders — specifically, the Chocolate Room's wild chocolate river and candy plants as the guests pick up their jaws from the floor. The scene opens with Wonka leading the group down the stairs, skipping down in a highly specific bow-legged fashion while casually doing two little — and, as Chalamet attested, deceptively difficult — backsteps on the way down.
As Chalamet notes in the interview, "Wonka" also pays subtle homage to another classic Wilder moment — namely, his introduction in the 1971 movie. The scene shows Wilder's Wonka pretending to be a frail and feeble man, then suddenly leaving his cane to stand by itself and revealing his true limberness with a sudden falling forward roll. Early in "Wonka," Chalamet's version of the character uses a similar self-standing cane trick during the "Hoverchocs" scene.
Looper's "Wonka" review found that director Paul King and Chalamet stuck the landing of the movie. It's fun to find out that the actor did so while paying these subtle homages to Wilder's work.