"Tickety-boo!" Timothée Chalamet on Wonka, Paddington, Dune & having "the coolest job in the world!"

I've spent the past seven years traveling the world perfecting my craft. You see, I'm something of a magician, inventor, and chocolate maker. So quiet up and listen down. Nope, scratch that, reverse it. I've got to ask about that photo though that's been going around of you with the Paddington doll, I want to call it. Oh yeah. Yeah, what was going on there? That's with Hideo Kojima, who's like the master of video games in Japan. And he's an enormous Paddington fan. That picture's with the Paddington bear, but he also had a Paddington briefcase that goes with the bear that he got Paul to sign, finally. But yeah, that just shows how Paddington has this crazy... Fan base. Yeah. Like he appeals to so many people, and I think so much of Paul is in that character. Paul is Paddington. It's so true. He's just wonderfully joyful and optimistic and childlike. I mean that in the most complimentary way. You know, just a delight. And it's rare with these... I hate to speak in film critic terms or whatever, but it's rare with these masterful directors to have that quality, both as a person, but also in your films. Because otherwise people feel like films with these kind of themes of never letting your dreams die or community and love, they feel like sometimes it's like Hollywood's trying to sell them something, you know? And I don't want to be overconfident, but this really is not that. And that's thanks to Paul. Every good thing in this world started with a dream. So you hold on to yours. Here we go, mama. The real genuine joy that he wants to give other people, it's palpable. Yeah. I could wax lyrical about him. He's amazing. Yeah. Do you have a favourite Paddington moment from the films, though? My favourite Paddington moment... Perhaps it's in the second one. It doesn't have to do with Paddington Bear, but when Hugh Grant's in his sort of acting workshop. I have followed this lady through the whole of London and collected every one of her clever little clues. Aye, but what do they mean? It's just a jumble of letters, ain't it? Au contraire, mon ami. Uh-uh. They are not letters at all. They are musical notes. I'm a big sucker for like, you know, movies and TV shows that make fun of actors. Like even in Arrested Development, there's a... What's the character named? Tobias? Fouquet. Yeah, who goes on the fire sale audition. Am I panicked about the fire, or am I being brave for everyone else? The fire. It's a fire sale. If you've ever seen that scene... I'm on fire! Oh my god, we're... Sale. Oh, the burning! Yeah, and then they go, do you want to do it again? It's more like a fire sale. And he goes, nope. And then he walks out the room and he... Would you like to try that a little simpler, maybe? No. I love that. Completely, it's my favorite thing. I absolutely love it. What gave you, though, the biggest, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, acting challenge fear? The singing or the dancing? Both. I say this to the guy who has smashed a Troye Sivan impression. Ah, thank you. It's me, Troye Sivan. Thank you. I couldn't get the Australian accent together in time. That was like, insecurity on my part, but I had... Yeah, anyway. You know the film Dream Scenario? I now want you. Oh wait, oh, the Nic Cage movie, that just came out. And it appears in people's dreams. My sister told me to watch that. Oh, you've been on my mind recently. You just keep popping up in my dreams. You don't do anything, you're just there. I want the sleep demon of you as Troye Sivan. So now Troye Sivan is a sleep demon, but me as Troye Sivan is a sleep demon. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, singing, dancing, and you have to do it with CGI and special effects. The chocolate is flying, you're flying, you're holding onto balloons, you're spinning people around, umbrellas. Yes, lots of umbrellas. Is there a particular dance move that you look back on and go, how did I get away with it? That's a good question. I mean, it's so slight as to be imperceptible, so... Oh, I love it. I'm wary, but just going down the stairs in the opening number, and there was that homage to Gene Wilder. I don't know if anybody would pick up on it, but he goes down the stairs, he pops back up. Did you pick up on it? Yeah, okay. That's way harder than it looks, you know? The full cane drop he does at the beginning of the film. Insane. When you think about the physical mechanics of that. Maybe I shouldn't even say this because it'll feel like we failed. The failure is important. But we tried in the sort of opening chocolate store sequence where Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickle Groober introduce the evil chocolatiers. Let's try one of these so-called hover trucks. We tried a bit to get that roll in. Ladies and gentlemen, greetings to you all. My name is Willy Wonka. And it required, like, we put a magnet on the bottom of the cane and then a magnet on the floor because he leaves it in place. And then the roll itself was nearly like impossible to accomplish. But actually getting the cane to stay. So we figured on the original, they must have built, you know, a tiny hole in the ground or something for Gene Wilder. But I don't know. I want to believe he just could do it. Yeah, I agree. And the answer is he probably could. He probably could. Yeah. He probably could. Yes, good. In we go. You shot a lot of this movie, though, in the UK. Uh-huh. And we love to see it. You can recognize Bath here and there. Uh-huh. Yes. Do you have a particular British turn of phrase that you love that you've been surprised by and you had to ask somebody? What does that mean? I mean, tickety-boo. That's pretty... I haven't been able to sneak that into my American vocabulary. That'd be good. And what does tickety-boo mean? Tickety-boo means everything's... I was about to say everything's hunky-dory. Yeah. Everything's tip-top. Hunky-dory. That's more my American worldview right there. Yeah. I'm helping. Yeah, thank you. I'm the translator. And are you willing to admit right now, and this is my Pulitzer possibly winning prize question, are you willing to admit that British chocolate is better than American chocolate? Yeah, I mean... It's controversial. British chocolate is more fanciful. It's richer. It's better put together. You prepare like this. Yeah, American chocolates are full of trans fat. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, no. American chocolate's delicious too, though. I love Raisinets. It's all good. It's all a sugar rush. That's the wonk away. Yeah. All right. You get to work with Olivia Colman in this movie. Read the small print. Thank you, Nolaldo. And the trouble with working with her is that she's so wonderful... Yeah. ...that you just stop acting and start staring. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. What did you say? Who's that in? The girl. What girl? Was she the person that made you crack and corpse the most? The person that made me corpse the most? Oh, that's a good question too. Got Keegan going on. It probably was Keegan. I sell chocolate in this town. You're going to get more than a bonk on the head. Keegan's like... Sort of like you think like you're a pretty good singer and then you hear like actual singers or you think you're a pretty good actor and you see an amazing actor. And then like, you can think like, you know, your friends are pretty funny and then you're around like an athletic comedy god. I love a bonk on the head. What is with me today? He's not coming up with a good joke. He's just on fire all the time. He's impersonating. He's probably going to do the cane trick in his back garden. Yeah, exactly. He's just a beast. But I will say Olivia helped me tremendously because one of my scenes early on was with her. And at first, this tone, I just hadn't acted in a movie that was so light. And I was kind of having to coach myself to, you know, something I was proud of early on in my career. I was just talking about it before. It's like, I never wanted to feel like I was thrilled to be in a movie, no matter how thrilled I was to be in Interstellar or something, because I always feel a little retraditional or something when I'm watching a movie and you sense the excitement of someone to be in it. Yeah. Trouble safer? Healing after a place for me, right? And this was the opposite, you know, where I was like, this man would be excitable. That girl, it sounded like, read the small print and there does seem to be a lot of tone. And then when I was acting with Olivia, who's somebody I respect, you know, tremendously, whose body of work speaks for itself, and I saw how much she was letting go. Yeah, you don't want to listen to Noodle, Mr Wong, because she's damaged. She was dropped down the laundry chute as a bab. Then I felt like I could match that and it was, yeah, it was hugely insightful for me. Well, that all seems to be in order. Really? Uh-huh. Hello. Ah, then welcome to Scrubby's. What about getting into the costume for the first time? Because it is so iconic. You've got the hat, you've got the cane, you've mentioned already. You've got a jacket not dissimilar to this. Yeah. What was it like putting it on for the first time? Because I love that the costume designer for this movie is best known previously for her work on The Dark Knight. Yeah, exactly. And that was a big conversation we had, was, you know, was exactly, exactly. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. One of my favorite things with the Heath Ledger Joker costume was how beat up it was. We are tonight's entertainment. Which is the, that was the only thought I had for it, because Lindy Hemming, the costume designer, she's a legend. I wouldn't pretend to, you know, whatever, try to affect her work. But the one thing, because he's a young, ambitious chocolatier, but isn't the Willy Wonka that we know that's made it, that's dressed to the nines, both in the Gene Wilder and the Tim Burton, Johnny version. Now, do be careful, my dear children. Don't lose your heads. Is that it felt like, like he was off the boat. Like he's battered and bruised and his clothes are tattered and she crushed it. There was no detail on that suit that wasn't, it's falling apart. It's singed at the edges. The lining, the coat lining's incredible. And there must've been like a dozen of the suits and a dozen of the hats. There were five, I think. There were five. Yeah, there were five. There was a stunt one that was, you know, for all the explode car, car crashes and explosions. Okay, but there was a stunt one that was like. Well, that great scene with the back flip out of a burning building. Yeah, it's incredible. Vin Diesel makes his cameo. Slow-mo. Yeah, slamming his guns going off. But yeah, she's extraordinary. And that like, you know, that's my favorite. Film and performance. Did you get to keep a hat or a cane? And if you did get to keep any of the wonkiness, is it going to get framed? What do you do with it? I did, but I'm like a little hush, hush about it. Because I don't think I was supposed to. I don't know if they've noticed yet. The good news is that there's no cameras running. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't go online or anything. You should be okay. You get to do a few incredible things that for me, as a film fan, you as an actor, I can imagine you were delighted to be able to do because it takes cinema to have these sort of moments, including hopping off a truck and then swinging around a lamppost. Were those little moments in your life where you go, I have the best job in the world? Yes, definitely. Like, I guess on Dune, there were moments where the film was so enormous. Yeah. That it's humbling is too general a word. I don't know. It's like beyond humbling. It's just, as you just said, you feel like, oh, I got the coolest job in the world. And also there's a physical element of risk here that how hilarious it would be to break a bone doing something like this, you know? I would love to go home and someone says, how was your day? I broke my ankle swinging around a lamppost. Yeah. And even like, yeah, this feeling like you can't speak up about your shoulder giving out because how lucky one is to be working on it. But this movie, more than anything I worked on, I think I had those moments. In Dune, the locations like to be in Abu Dhabi and Jordan. And the heat. The heat and the costumes and the deni and just like, wow, we're working on this great. But this, as far as like the sets. And this is easily the most physically challenging role. Absolutely. And it's something I thought about. This Wonka character is a driving force of the movie. And because he's without agency, everything's on the up. Yes. You know, so it was, yeah, I agree. You had to bring it. I have to finish it this way. Good day, sir. Thank you. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to keep up to date. You can listen to my Radio 1 movies and TV podcast Screen Time on BBC Sounds. And you can find these interviews in full on BBC iPlayer by searching movies with Ali Plumb.