Timothée Chalamet didn't have to audition for his 'Wonka' role because the director had seen his high-school rap videos and 'knew he could sing and dance'
- Paul King told Rolling Stone that Timothée Chalamet didn't have to audition for his role in "Wonka."
- The director said he checked out Chalamet's viral high-school performances and 'Lil Timmy Tim' raps.
Timothée Chalamet is set to show off his singing skills in two upcoming films: "Wonka," the Paul King film about the titular chocolate maker, and the Bob Dylan biopic, "The Complete Unknown."
But it turns out that the actor didn't have to audition to snag his role in the former. In fact, Paul King, the director of "Wonka," said no one auditioned, despite reports that Warner Bros. considered Donald Glover, Ryan Gosling, and Ezra Miller before Chalamet was cast in 2021.
"It was a straight offer because he's great, and he was the only person in my mind who could do it," King told Rolling Stone of casting Chalamet.
King said he knew the actor could sing and dance because he had seen several videos of a teenage Chalamet performing onstage as a student at New York City's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art.
While you can find clips of him singing in the musical "Sweet Charity," it's his rapping alter ego, "Lil Timmy Tim," that really needs to be seen to be believed.
In the viral "Statistics" rap, which he reportedly submitted to his teacher for an assignment, a low-rise jeans-wearing Chalamet rapped: "Let's do a problem, let us see, the probability you see me on TV. One-zero-zero-zero trillion percent."
The video was popularized by Ellen DeGeneres, who asked Chalamet about it during an appearance on her talk show in November 2017.
King said he "knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well."
"I knew that was in his arsenal, but I didn't know how good he was," he said of Chalamet, who recorded music for "Wonka" at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London.
The first trailer for "Wonka" was released on Tuesday.
The movie, which also stars Hugh Grant as a 20-inch Oompa Loompa, tells the origin story of the iconic character from Roald Dahl's beloved children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."