The Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow has kept people morbidly delighted over the last few weeks. The event promised families a chance to enter a confectionary paradise but veered from paradise to dystopian nightmare.
The spectacular failure of the Willy Wonka experience left children, and the internet, in tears (albeit for different reasons). Families showed up having paid £35 (roughly $44) expecting a fantastical day out for their little ones only to be so horrified by what they walked into that some of them called the police describing the sad-looking warehouse as appearing more like a meth lab than a chocolate factory.
The dismal event has already been compared to the likes of Fyre Festival and has kept the internet entertained with meme after meme poking fun at just how bad it was. Journalists have reached out to actors who took part in the “immersive” event, and Willy Wonka—ahem, sorry, Willy McDuff actor, Paul Connell and others have spoken out about what they went through. (Apparently, no one behind the event thought to make actors sign NDAs.) Now the actress playing the deflated Oompa-Loompa character, whose image has been shared across social media sites, has also shared her experience.
Irish actress Jenny Fogarty from Dublin spoke to Joe and said she had no idea what she was getting into when she was offered the role. Having been looking for production design work in Glasgow, Fogarty stumbled across the gig saying “I just thought it would be dressing up as a character handing out sweets, a pretty easy gig for a weekend,” before adding, “But that wasn’t the case.”
Having been offered the job on a Thursday she was then called in Friday for a costume fitting, only to be shocked by how underprepared the event was. Though alarm bells may have been set off, Fogarty gave them the benefit of the doubt saying, “I just assumed like, there’d be a lot more done. So they’re going to be here all night. God bless them.” It wasn’t until she saw the warehouse that it started to sink in how bad the event was going to be.
“We got told the Twilight Tunnel was going to have projections through it. When we showed up in the morning, it just had some mirrors put up and some curtains… It was bad.”
She corroborated what Connell had already revealed about the AI-generated script, saying they were given 15 pages to learn overnight, and when they raised concerns were then told to “improvise.” Fogarty and her fellow actors all concluded that this was a mess, but thought, “Look, we’ll try our best, just get on with the day, see what happens, and then never speak of this again.”
Well, given the extreme notoriety that has followed the calamitous Willy Wonka Experience and the fact that her photo has been shared far and wide, we doubt she will ever forget. Let’s hope that, as seen in the video, she can just laugh at it and chalk it up to experience!
(featured image: Paramount Pictures)
