Singing About ‘Willy Wonka,’ Actors Strike

“Saturday Night Live” host Timothée Chalamet took full advantage of his ability to promote his latest movie, the upcoming movie musical, “Wonka,” following the conclusion of the 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike, which had prohibited actors from promoting any work for the studios. In his opening monologue, after first joking that during the strike, all he could talk about was his perfume commercial directed by Martin Scorsese — “when you get that call that Martin Scorsese wants to direct you, the first think you think is, ‘Man, I really hope it’s a perfume commercial’” — Chalamet then broke into song to sing about the strike the tune of “Pure Imagination.

“Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of shameless self-promotion — it’s OK, I can say…” the actor crooned, before immediately turning to the camera to plug “Wonka’s” premiere on Dec. 15, and playing up his costar Hugh Grant’s “Oompa Loompa dump truck.”

Then Chalamet got back to singing, name dropping Scorsese’s film “Killers of the Flower Moon” and his own highly anticipated sci-fi epic “Dune: Part Two,” which stars Chalamet as the messianic Paul Atreides. The actors strike led Warner Bros. to push the release of that movie from Nov. 3 to March 15, taking it out of this year’s awards season.

After making a joke about A.I.-generated crowds, Chalamet was interrupted by “SNL” featured player Marcello Hernandez for what seemed like the original plan for the actor’s monologue: A rap duet about being baby faced lady killers: “I got a baby face, but my hips don’t lie, say I’m a bad kid, bitch, I’m a bad guy. I got a baby face, but I’m hung like my dad, trust me, baby, I’m the best you ever had.” They were eventually joined by Punkie Johnson as Nicki Minaj and Kenan Thompson as himself.