Hugh Grant preparing for smallest part ever as he’s cast as an Oompa Loompa in new film Wonka
HUGH Grant is getting ready for his smallest part yet — as an Oompa-Loompa.
The actor will play one of the controversial miniature workers in a prequel to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book.
In a woke casting move, film bosses refused to use dwarfs as they did not wish to offend small people.
Hugh, 61, will star below Timothee Chalamet, 26, who plays a young version of Roald Dahl’s eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka in the film —
Wonka — due out in 2023. The teeny role is a far cry from Hugh’s blockbuster parts in movies like Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Filming has taken over Oxford city centre this week.
Posh Hugh has set up camp inside the swanky Hertford College area of the University of Oxford, causing student meetings to be relocated at the last minute.
It was initially thought that the Oompa-Loompas would not be part of the project amid fears by studio bosses they could cause offence.
Campaigners have branded them a “racist” creation. In Dahl’s 1964 book, Wonka is said to have “imported” them from the “very deepest darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before”.
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Speaking in 1973, the author defended their inclusion, saying: “It didn’t occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist.”
However, he revised the book that year and made them white hippies. In the 1971 film, they were orange-skinned with green hair.