Josh O’Connor wants to play a “darker version” of Willy Wonka

Josh O’Connor has revealed his dream role.

• READ MORE: ‘Challengers’ review: Zendaya’s titillating tennis drama is one of the year’s best movies

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, O’Connor – who stars in Challengers alongside Zendaya and Mike Faist – revealed that the one character he would like to play given the chance is a “darker version” of Willy Wonka.

However, O’Connor was quick to note that Timothée Chalamet most recently had a turn as the iconic character: “I think probably, I’d love to play Willy Wonka, but like a dark Willy Wonka. I know they just made a Wonka film with Timothée Chalamet, but I would really like to play a sort of darker version of him.”

Chalamet isn’t the only actor O’Connor noted to take on the mantle of Wonka. O’Connor said: “I think Gene Wilder’s version of him is very dark. Although, it’s not dark in this sinister necessarily way. It’s just that I think he’s a really angry man.”

“I mean, these kids win a competition to go around a chocolate factory and they all seemingly disappear. It’s sort of mad and dark. So I think I’d just play the truth of it,” O’Connor concluded on the topic.

Besides Challengers, Josh O’Connor is also known for rolls in Emma, Peaky Blinders and The Crown among others.

Challengers scored a four-star review, with Matthew Turner writing for NME: “The performances are exceptional, with off-the-scale chemistry between all three leads. Zendaya, in particular, is a force of nature, and you feel her angry frustration at her own career path (which was cut short by injury) in every scene. O’Connor and Faist are equally good, and if the film has a flaw, it’s only that it doesn’t explicitly dig deeper into their feelings for each other, leaving it as an underlying suggestion instead.”

Last year, O’Connor revealed that he had gone to school with FKA Twigs and that he had joined a band in an attempt to impress her. “I really shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s hilarious,” O’Connor said. “I was in a band called Orange Output basically to try and get Twigs to go out with me. I was the lead singer, and one of the lyrics I wrote was, ‘I’m addicted to crack, motherfucker.’ The closest thing I’d had to crack was Coco Pops.”

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