"The script was 15 pages of AI-generated gibberish": Willy Wonka experience actor drops shocking details behind disastrous Glasgow event 

A Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow saw a promising Charlie and the Chocolate Factory experience crumble to a disappointing stop. The event, organized by events company House of Illuminati, was stopped when parents and children arrived at the venue to find a lackluster arrangement. It was far from the experience that they were promised.

With ticket prices going as high as £35, the weekend event promised to be a "celebration of chocolate in all its delightful forms." However, this was far from reality as hundreds of parents and children came to a sparsely decorated warehouse. The organizers reportedly refunded 850 tickets before closing the venue. Further refunds have been promised to the late arrivals.

The chaotic event also saw police being summoned to the venue. A stand-up comedian hired to play Willy Wonka, Paul Connell, revealed some details in a new interview with The Independent.

"I’m constantly applying for more acting jobs and comedy work then I got a phone call on Thursday basically saying ‘Congratulations you are going to play Willy Wonka we will send you over the script and dress rehearsal is tomorrow...The script was 15 pages of AI-generated gibberish of me just monologuing these mad things."

He revealed details about how even the actors did not know what to expect and how the underwhelming experience affected them.

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"I am just a last-minute actor really I didn’t organize anything": Comedian Paul Connell on the disorganized Willy Wonka experience

The experience at the disastrous Glasgow venue, which saw children being reduced to tears, is reportedly just as bad for some of the people involved in the project. This includes the actors brought in at the last minute to make the event happen.

The actors, including Paul Connell, reportedly did not expect to find the empty warehouse, just like the visitors.

"In some ways it was a world of imagination, like imagine that there is a whole chocolate factory here...I spoke to the people running it and thought surely by the morning it won’t look like this and then I turned up in the morning and it absolutely did...At the end of my monologue I was supposed to suck up the Unknown Man with a vacuum cleaner. I asked them if they had a vacuum cleaner and they said ‘yeh we haven’t really got there yet so just improvise.’"

Not only were the actors disappointed in finding the venue looking disastrous, but they were also not provided enough amenities to perform their acts.

Connell further elaborated,

"I was told I would get a 15 minute break every 45 minutes after each group went through...But I ended up playing Willy Wonka for three and a half hours straight. I didn’t know where I ended and Wonka began. I was losing my mind by that point."

Though the actors tried to make the best of it, the bigger shock came as the organizer reportedly asked Connell to stop spending "too much time" on kids to get it done faster.

This continued till the lunch break, and when Connell finally managed to get out of his Willy Wonka costume, it was only to find an angry mob at the door.

"People were shouting, people who put on the event were crying. There were arguments, people running around everywhere - the set had been trashed."

Following this, the actors decided to walk away.

"It was actually getting quite dangerous for us. But it was heartbreaking to be honest."

The experience ended with police being summoned and the organizers promising to return all the money they had taken for the tickets.

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Despite the movie being a beloved classic, the Willy Wonka experience ended up being one of the infamous disasters of 2024.