To watch Johnny Depp's masterful rendering of Willy Wonka in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, you'd think he was channelling Michael Jackson, with the white face, red lips and black bob, not to mention the character's warped love of children.
Yet The Pirates Of The Caribbean star swears that the King of Pop never entered his mind. But in terms of inspiration, he listened to Herman's Hermits throughout filming - because he's convinced that they'd be Wonka's favourite band.
He even used his daughter Lily Rose as a barometer, testing out the character's voice while they were playing Barbie dolls - and passing with flying colours…
You're the perfect Willy Wonka. Did you enjoy playing a character with no social skills?
Yes, I did enjoy playing someone with slightly twisted social skills. It's a bit of fun playing characters who, for whatever reasons, can do things that I would never dream of doing, or speak to people in a way I couldn't bring myself ever to do, so there's great fun in that, great safety in playing those parts. Once you have learned to talk like them or be them, I guess, there's great safety in it.
What was the appeal of playing Willy Wonka? It must have seemed like a big risk taking on the iconic part once played by Gene Wilder.
Well, I was definitely a Gene Wilder fan, but that's not what drove me to this. Initially, the material was one of the seductive elements certainly, but more than anything it was the fact that it was Tim (Burton) asking me to do it.
As for the fans of the book and the fans of the 1971 film, I realised it's a very well-loved character, so I knew that I would have to take it somewhere far away from Gene Wilder and the area that he had stomped.
Having that amazing material by (author) Roald Dahl and taking that and trying to interpret what he might have liked to see in terms of cinema. What kind of character would he have liked? There's such dark and light in that story in such a subversive kind of undertone, and a twisted, perverted kind of side to the character that I ran into the direction that seemed right to me.
Did you think of Michael Jackson at any time you were shooting the film? Many people have said your Wonka resembles the King of Pop.
It actually never crossed my mind, oddly enough. Michael Jackson was not an ingredient or inspiration for the part of the character at all. A few people have mentioned it and it kind of took me by surprise because I really didn't expect that.
I guess on some level I can understand. There's a little bit of a look, but you can easily think of some other recluse like Howard Hughes as well. Also, Roald Dahl wrote this book and wrote this character and it was published in 1964 when Michael Jackson was a wee lad, so I don't think he was inspired by him either.
So who was your inspiration for the development of this character?
What I started to see when I was thinking about it in my early research was I had these memories of children's show hosts from when I was a kid. When I was like five or six years old, I watched guys like Captain Kangaroo and Mr Rogers' Neighborhood and local guys like Mr Greenjeans, and I remembered thinking even then how it was really odd the way they spoke, that kind of bizarre musical rhythm cadence to their speech pattern and that, 'Good morning, children…'
I took that speech pattern and made that one of the main ingredients for Wonka and stretched it out a bit. His speech pattern would be very, very dated. He talks jive to one of the kids. I remember one scene where I was speaking jive to little Jordan (Fry), who played Mike Teevee, and so I came up with this thing, 'It's in the fridge, Daddy-O,' and we were doing a rehearsal and I walked up to him and put my hand on him and said, 'Slide me some skin, Daddy-O' and he tilted in a backwards angle looking at me saying, 'That's not in the script (laughs).' It killed me. I just burst out with hysterical laughter.
I was also thinking about game show hosts that I remembered on television growing up, and that kind of perpetual sort of glee-grimace on their face and I kept thinking that they certainly weren't like they are at home! You feel like they go on stage and put a mask on and do their thing and take it off. It's almost like a clown or something. Those things became the basis for this version of Wonka.
