Calah Lane’s scene-stealing performance as Noodle in Wonka was nothing short of delightful. Now the young actress talks about her experience developing the original character and eating all the chocolate.
In Wonka, Willy Wonka, an aspiring magician, inventor, and chocolatier, arrives in Europe with nothing more than a dream and a pocket full of change. He hopes to open his first shop at the Galéries Gourmet, the epicenter of everything that is confectionary chocolate. Though there are those who take advantage of the down-on-his-luck Wonka’s naivety, he is helped out by a young, sharp, and witty orphan with a heart of gold named Noodle. Together, they make quite a pair that launches a business all the while discovering the secrets of making the best chocolate.
That’s It LA had the chance to sit down with their fellow bloggers for a virtual interview with Lane. She spoke about what it was like to star in the film, swimming in a pool of chocolate, crafting an original character using Annie as an inspiration, and deciding, of all the chocolate she ate on the set, was her favorite.
During the roundtable interview, I asked about the preparation for developing an original character like Noodle. The orphan child forced to a destitute life working for scheming innkeepers who con their guests into housing in one of their rooms that has outrageously expensive hidden fees. However, that doesn’t stop her from preventing guests from being duped into renting out a room. Her kindness and generosity knows no bounds, and literacy proficiency proves to be invaluable to an illiterate Wonka. Her character’s skepticism allows us to accept that Willy can be naive and oblivious to a world full of people who would take advantage of his innocence.
Noodle is a refreshingly original character. As such, I wanted to know more about the preparation and where she drew inspiration from to help develop the character that we know now.
Lane said, “It was very cool being able to be a part of this film and be an original characters. So I definitely had that flexibility, which was good because I didn’t have to copy – Well, of course, I wasn’t copying, but I didn’t have to the same characteristics as somebody else. So I got to make it my own.”
“I had just like kind of step into that part of not being loved,” Lane said. “And I was that and one thing I used to watch to kind of like, get me into that that mindset was watching ‘Annie.’ I watched that movie a couple of times. And that’s actually one of my favorite movies also. So I kind of got to like feel how he felt and all that and it kind of helped me get into that kind of mindset.”
Of course, when there is a film like “Wonka,” it stands to reason that there will be a lot of chocolates involved. And Lane had her fair share of eating the delectable confectionary concoctions. “I definitely like all the chocolates. My favorite, the only one that I really got a chance to eat was the silver lining. That’s the one that I ate over and over and over again,” she said. It was so good.”
While there was plenty of practical candy, the props team also threw in a few nods from the original like the edible teacups. “There was also a teacup in at the end of the song and a world of your own being mean to me are eating like a teacup or we’re drinking out of it,” Lane said. “But we’re eating it too. And it’s like crazy because that tasted so good also, and we had a chocolate tea on set. She made all the chocolate she like handcrafted them. They tasted absolutely incredible. And they looked beautiful too.
While there was plenty of chocolate to eat and drink, Lane and her co-star Timothee Chalamet, who plays the titular character, had a chance interact with it in one of the film’s biggest stunts. “The first time we we did it. We were actually sitting down in a big like, tub of it. It wasn’t chocolate, it was like brown lotion,” she said. “So that was a good thought. But but it was definitely not chocolate the first time. Second time we weren’t in a chair. We were squatting. And we were like squatting and going under the under the chocolate. And that time it was it had some sort of real chocolate and it because it smelled like chocolate. So they definitely did it better.
Wonka is available now on Digital, and hits store shelves on February 27, 2024.
