Willy’s Chocolate Factory Experience: Wonka actor speaks out about “dangerous” and “heartbreaking” event

29 February, 2024

A stand-up comedian hired to play Willy Wonka at a widely criticised chocolate factory experience has spoken out about the nightmare acting gig.

The Glasgow event went viral on social media after images emerged of an empty warehouse sparsely decorated with a few plastic mushrooms and pictures attached to the walls.

Willy’s Chocolate Experience organiser Billy Coull apologised for his “vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book that didn’t come to fruition” and offered 850 people their money back before closing the experience on Saturday (February 24).

Now, Paul Connell, one of the actors hired to impersonate Willy Wonka, has revealed how the disastrous event unfolded, leading to furious parents trashing the set and demanding refunds.

“The script was 15 pages of AI-generated gibberish of me just monologuing these mad things,” Connell told The Independent.

“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.’

“It was terrifying for the kids. Is he an evil man who makes chocolate or is the chocolate itself evil?

When the event opened on Friday, February 23, Connell turned up to the find that the “immersive and enchanting” experience was, in fact, an empty warehouse with a few shoddy decorations.

“In some ways, it was a world of imagination, like imagine that there is a whole chocolate factory here,” he said. “I spoke to the people running it and thought, surely by the morning it won’t look like this, and then I turned up in the morning and it absolutely did.

“At the end of my monologue, I was supposed to suck up the Unknown Man with a vacuum cleaner. I asked them if they had a vacuum cleaner and they said, ‘yeah, we haven’t really got there yet, so just improvise’.

Connell went on to say that all the actors involved were “lovely people” and that they quickly realised they wouldn’t be paid for the gig, but they were determined to make the experience as magic for the kids as possible.

“I was making jokes but we were told to give them one jelly bean and a quarter cup of lemonade,” he continued. “No chocolate at the chocolate experience. There was supposed to be a chocolate fountain somewhere but I never saw it.

“When I came back, that’s when everything kicked off,” he explained. “There was an angry mob at the door not being let in. I had to wedge my way through.

“I was Wonka and it’s my face everywhere. But I am just a last-minute actor, really, I didn’t organise anything.’

He added: “People were shouting, people who put on the event were crying. There were arguments, people running around everywhere – the set had been trashed.”

In the end, Connell said he decided to walk away, claiming it was “actually getting quite dangerous” for the actors. “It was heartbreaking to be honest.”

Stuart Sinclair, a father who travelled two hours to attend the experience with his family, said: “It was nothing short of shocking. But all the cast that were there did their absolute best. Unfortunately, they were all sub-contractor actors hired by [House of] Illuminati and haven’t been paid either.

“They were in as much shock as us. But it was probably worse for them because this is their job and made them look bad when it wasn’t their fault.”

It comes after Oompa-Loompa actress Kirsty Paterson previously spoke out about the disastrous experience, revealing she had not yet been paid the £500 she’d been offered for the gig.

“The whole thing’s just been a complete and utter shambles. It was shocking honestly,” she told the MailOnline.

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