Original “Willy Wonka” Actors Talk About Viral Glasgow Fiasco That Inspired New Parody Musical (Exclusive)

Julie Dawn Cole and Paris Themmen played Veruca Salt and Mike Teevee in the film, and will appear in 'Willy's Candy Spectacular' at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest

Julie Dawn Cole and Paris Themmen have nothing but fond memories of playing Veruca Salt and Mike Teevee in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Cole was 12 years old and Themmen just 10 when they were cast to star as their bratty characters opposite Gene Wilder in director Mel Stuart’s musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel.

Cole remembers the film’s young cast rushing back to set after their required academic work to hear Roy Kinnear — who played Vercua Salt’s indulgent father — share stories about working with the Beatles in 1965’s Help! Veteran performer Jack Albertson, who appeared in the film as Charlie Bucket’s Grandpa Joe, entertained the kids with his old vaudeville routine. And Wilder was “just Gene” to his young co-stars.

Related: Timothée Chalamet Says He Didn't Reach Out to Johnny Depp for Advice on Playing Willy Wonka

Neither Cole nor Themmen remembers having any sense that they were part of what would become a global cultural phenomenon. “When you’re 11 and 12, you don’t think in those terms,” says Cole. “You just take everything in your stride. It’s afterwards you go, ‘Wow! That was cool.’ ”

“The film was also not hugely popular at the time,” Themmen says. “It grew in popularity around the ’80s. They were showing it once a year on TV and it started to get cult status. So, now we can look back and go, ‘Wow, I was working with all these great people. Look at how much talent is all in that one place.’ But at the time, we didn’t have that perspective. It’s only in hindsight that we really can recognize that in many ways we were really lucky to be in this wonderful film.”

“We were a bunch of kids on location in Germany, away from home, no cable TV, no Netflix or any of that,” Cole recalls. “So, we had a lot of fun hanging out. Obviously, the sets were amazing and wonderful, but we were also there to do a job. You know, we had to be professional. But it was a lot of fun.”

Related: All of the Actors Who Have Played Willy Wonka

“They would have us in an amazing set,” Themmen remembers, “which was not CG at all. It was all practically built — particularly the chocolate room, which was sort of the star set.”

“It’s kind of like they were building a Disneyland just for us,” Themmen adds, “and we were the only kids that got to ride on it.”

As the film went from cult favorite to beloved classic over the past 50 years, kids around the world have been dreaming of stepping into the candy-coated world of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, with its cocoa river, gumdrop trees and lollipop flowers. Earlier this year, some families in Glasgow, Scotland, thought they’d gotten a golden ticket to just such an experience. They’d purchased tickets to “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” an unauthorized “immersive” event inspired by Dahl’s book and its many subsequent film iterations.

But London-based producer House of Illuminati wasn’t able to deliver on its advertised promise of “whimsical performances” and “surprises at every turn.” Guests who arrived at the February 24 event found a sparsely decorated warehouse where local actors hired to play Wonka-inspired characters were ill prepared, having reportedly only received their AI-generated scripts hours beforehand. Children who attended were not only disappointed at receiving only two jellybeans, they were also terrified by a villainous character called “The Unknown.”

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Parents demanded refunds for their ￡35 (about $45) tickets. Police were called and the event was shut down midway through its opening day. But not before outraged parents posted photos and videos to social media, which quickly went viral, gaining international media attention over subsequent days.

Cole says she and Themmen were in Boston at the time appearing at a chocolate expo along with Peter Ostrum, who stared as Charlie in the 1971 film. “So, we spoke about it a lot,” she says. “We were talking about it going, ‘Oh my god, this is terrible!’ You know, the pictures and the stuff on the news! This sad little Oompa Loompa and all these disappointed people in this empty warehouse. And I felt really sad because we are very protective of Willy Wonka. We don’t want anybody’s bubble to be burst, and it was such a shame. I wanted to say, ‘It wasn’t me! It wasn’t anything to do with me!’ ”

Musical theater producer and director Richard Kraft had a very different reaction: “I was obsessed,” he says. “I mean, give me a good crazy story and I will follow it!”

For better or worse, Kraft says, he related most to the ostensible villain of the Glasgow fiasco: House of Illuminati’s Billy Coull. Kraft compares Coull to famous huckster impresarios like P.T. Barnum, Fyre Fest organizer Billy McFarland and even Walt Disney. “Everyone since the history of show business has been scrambling to put on a show,” Kraft says, “and you’re often selling the sizzle before you have a steak — including me!”

Case in point: Kraft’s fascination with the Glasgow event inspired him to put out a press release earlier this year announcing a stage musical based on the fiasco — before a single song or line of dialogue was ever written. “There was no show,” he says, “there was a press release.”

Flash forward several months and the resulting production, Willy’s Candy Spectacular: A Musical Parody, just began its world premiere run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival beginning on August 9.

The show, directed by Andy Fickman, who wrote the book along with Kraft, features songs by Kraft, Garfunkel and Oats’ Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, Tova Litvin, Daniel Mertzlufft and others, and will feature not only Cole and Themmen, but also Kirsty Paterson, the Scottish actress who shot to social media fame as “Sad Oompa Loompa” when a photo of her at the Glasgow event went viral in February.

“We’re not doing a musical about Willy Wonka and we’re not doing a literal thing about what took place in Glasgow,” Kraft explains. “It became the inspiration. I think of it as the Fyre Fest of Fudge.”

Cole and Themmen will star alongside Paterson as one of the show’s two narrators, with Cole performing the role through August 18, and Themmen taking over for the remaining performances through August 26. Each of the original Willy Wonka stars will make the role their own, playing versions of their adult selves with inflections of their Wonka characters.

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“There are two narrators in the show: Kirsty is one of them, so she’s playing herself as a narrator. The second narrator is either Julie or Paris,” Kraft explains. “There’s a lot of comparing and contrasting experiences of Julie and Paris to the journey of Kirsty: one of them got to be part of an immortal classic and the other had the police show up.”

Meanwhile, another actor will play Paterson in the musical’s depiction of the Glasgow-inspired events.

After Edinburgh, the sky is the limit for the show, according to Kraft. “We very much want to do the show in England,” he says. “And then world domination.”

“You shouldn’t ask Richard what he wants to do with it!” Cole jokes. “He’s gonna give you some b-------- answer!” After all, she says, like Barnum and Disney and even Coull, Kraft is nothing if not an impresario, making the magic up as he goes along fueled by pure imagination.

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