Roald Dahl's Widow Says Charlie From 'The Chocolate Factory' Was Originally Black
Roald Dahl's Widow Says Charlie From 'The Chocolate Factory' Was Originally Black
Sounds a bit like whatever-Gandalfs-name-in-Harry-Potter-is is gay, actually but ok.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
She spoke earlier this week on BBC Radio 4's Today program, alongside Roald Dahl biographer Donald Sturrock, who said it was the writer's agent "who thought it was a bad idea" and had the author turn the protagonist white.
The BBC interviewer followed up by suggesting a new rewrite of the book that would recast Charlie as a black child, to which Felicity Dahl responded, "it would be wonderful, wouldn't it?"
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which a boy from an impoverished family in Britain finds the fifth and final ticket to win a tour of the factory run by eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka, was just one of many wildly successful children's classics written by Dahl that also inspired major motion pictures.
Dahl transformed the Oompa Loompas into orange-tinted factory workers with green hair in subsequent editions of the book.
NPR reached out to the Roald Dahl organizations for a response to The Forward's quotes and more generalized critiques of racism, but did not hear back before publication.
As reported on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday in 2005, after starring in the original movie, Ostrum never acted in another film and went on to become a veterinarian.
Saved 50% of original text.