Willy Wonka from the cursed Willy Wonka experience has revealed what actually happened

Lydia Venn
·5 min read
willy wonka actor
Willy Wonka actor on cursed Glasgow experiencePaul Connell

If there's one thing that's been consuming our timelines, group chats, and tbh, every waking thought this week, it's the cursed Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow, and now the Willy Wonka has spoken out about what actually happened in that chaotic warehouse, where children's dreams went to die.

In an event comparable to the infamous Fyre Festival, earlier this week a Willy Wonka style experience was heavily criticised after images and videos of the event began circulating online. Taking place in a warehouse in Glasgow over the weekend (24 February) the event, organised by House of Illuminati, was sold as an immersive event for children and families where "fantasy and reality converge". However, there was little fantasy going on.

Instead, the 850 individuals who had paid £35 a ticket to attend were greeted with an old warehouse sparsely decorated with a few decorations, a bouncy castle, and a few hanging plastic backgrounds. And rather than a plentiful offering of sweet treats, each child received one singular jelly bean and a quarter of a cup of Tesco's lemonade.

The organiser of the event, Billy Coull, has apologised for the experience and offered refunds to all who attended, telling STV: "I’m really shocked that the event had fallen short of the expectations of people on paper.

“My vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book didn’t come to fruition. For that, I am absolutely truly and utterly sorry."

And now one of the three actors who took on the iconic role of Willy Wonka, Paul Connell, has shared his experience of what actually went down at the event.

Speaking on his TikTok @paulconnellcomedy yesterday (28 February), Paul gave a run down of the events leading up to the job on Saturday.

He explained he had been booked for the job on Thursday (22 February) and was told to learn a script ahead of the run through on Friday.

"I got cast in the part on Thursday, and was told I needed to learn the script for the Friday," he told his followers on TikTok. "The script was 15 pages monologue of AI generated gibberish.

“One of my favourite lines was ‘there is a man who lives here, his name is not known, so we call him the unknown. The unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls.’ I had to perform that line with gusto and validity, and that was a challenge as an actor."

Paul explained he was initially shocked to have even been given the part of Willy Wonka in the first place, describing the casting as a "red flag".

"Anyone who looks at me and thinks Willy Wonka, and not Oompa Loompa is out of their mind. I give off major Oompa Loompa energy, but not like a good Oompa Loompa, like one that's at the back of the dancing numbers," he said.

Paul went onto explain he and the other actors including Kirsty Paterson, who played that Oompa Loompa, turned up on Saturday morning at the warehouse to find it didn't exactly meet their expectations.

"We turned up as a group of actors in the morning on the Saturday. We walked around this place and saw a health and safety nightmare for a start," he claimed. "There were no special effects as was promised, there was a thing that was supposed to be called the Twilight Tunnel which everyone was meant to walk through, there was supposed to be stars twinkling inside. What it was, was a bunch of chequered flags pinned to a wall with some mirrors."

After seeing the state of the experience, the actors grouped together and decided to continue their performance for the day as they wanted to create a memorable experience for the children attending.

"We all got together as actors and were like, 'they’re going to put this event on with or without us and children are going to be coming through, lets just stick around and do our best to make that the children have some kind of experience'. All the actors who worked there are really nice people," he said.

When it came to performing, Paul was also baffled to be told by the organisers of the event to "improvise" a line in the script. The line in question? "There was a moment where I was supposed to suck up the unknown with a giant vacuum cleaner."

The team didn't actually have a vacuum cleaner. "I cant' improvise a vacuum cleaner. You either have a vacuum cleaner or you don't have a vacuum cleaner." Paul made the creative decision to leave that line out.

Paul then claimed he had been told he would be able to take a 15 minute break every 45 minutes, however he claimed he was playing the role of Willy Wonka for four hours straight. He then had a lunch break, and when he returned he said the event was "a little bit out of control."

He went onto explain people were "furious, they were shouting, there were people filming things on their phone, there were things being broken. I walked into this after my lunch and was told to hide."

Paul later told the Independent, he and the other Willy Wonkas and a few of the Oompa Loompas decided to walk away, adding, "It’s a night I’ll try to forget. Sadly, not only will I remember it, everyone I know will remember it too.

“We as actors were brought in last minute and we just did our best for the kids.”

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