Bust out your finest Wonka bars and craptacular memes! Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory turned 44 this week and NBC’s Today elected to mark the occasion with a cast reunion for you to gawk at over breakfast.
Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket), Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt), Paris Themmen (Mike Teavee), Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop), Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde) and Rusty Goffe (Oompa Loompa extraordinaire) all sat down for a chat in Orlando with Joe Fryer about the film and their lives after the picture. Of the bunch, only Rusty kept acting after the cinematic classic somersaulted into theaters. Peter/Charlie wound up becoming a veterinarian, which seems like a very unlikely profession for the one-time owner of a chocolate factory.
Everyone in the cast comes across awfully charming while fielding Today‘s questions and that’s probably because it sounds like nothing sinister went down on set. Well, aside from Denise/Violet giving up gum after it gave her thirteen cavities. Dedication to the arts!
The biggest ESCÁNDALO! moment shared in the cast’s zippy chat? The revelation that the chocolate river wasn’t all that it seemed.
“I’m sorry, it was water,” admitted Michael/Augustus when pressed about the fudgy stream.
Let’s get back to the less dreamsmashy stuff, shall we? It turns out Gene Wilder was a pretty patient dude around these memorable moppets. Here’s the way Julie/Veruca described working with the screen legend:
“[There were] five kids clamoring all over, wanting attention. There was never any ‘Please, don’t bother Mr. Wilder.’ And we must have been pretty tiresome.”
If memory serves, Today hasn’t gotten around to doing a cast reunion for the 10th anniversary of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s probably not on deck, either.
(via The Hollywood Reporter)
