A 77-year-old British Oompa Loompa from the original Willy Wonka film rejoined Netflix's new reality show and revealed the 1971 chocolate river was dirty water full of cigarette butts.
Rusty Goffe told the Daily Mail he is back in orange makeup and green hair for the streamer's reality series Wonka's The Golden Ticket, heading a new line of Oompa Loompas more than five decades after the Mel Stuart classic.
The show puts 12 pairs of contestants, each holding a golden ticket, through a factory recreation for a £2.25 million prize pot. Goffe, who stands 4ft 2in and has dwarfism, filmed for about six weeks last autumn on Australia's Gold Coast with his son Ben. The production used a state-of-the-art 88,000-square-foot set near Brisbane.
Only two original Oompa Loompas from the 1971 film are still alive: Goffe and Lancashire-born Albert Wilkinson, 88. Goffe was 22 when he arrived in Munich for what became his first movie. The picture, adapted from Roald Dahl's novel, was shot on a modest £2.2 million budget and did not break the bank at the box office.
Goffe did not romanticize the original set. He described the famous chocolate river in blunt terms.
"55 years ago, it was just dirty water. The crew were throwing cigarette ends and bits of old script into it. Then they poured real sugar and real cream in it."
Under the hot lights, the mix turned foul.
"After a few days under hot lights, everything started smelling terribly. In the new show, it was actually just a lovely chocolate river."
That contrast is the heart of his account. Old Hollywood cut corners. The new production spent for the look. Viewers get the polish. Goffe still remembers the smell.
Makeup was no easier. A crew member named Klaus handled the Oompa Loompas and kept reapplying orange powder. Goffe recalled the constant order: "More powder boys! There's a break...put more orange powder on." By day's end the actors had to scrape it off. The green wigs assumed every performer of short stature had the same head size. This time, he said, the wigs "fitted like a glove."
They also danced in heavy boots instead of the flat ballet pumps from 1971. Small details. Big difference when you are on your feet for weeks.
Netflix used an AI reconstruction of Gene Wilder's voice to narrate the series, with permission from the late star's estate. Wilder, who played Wonka, died in 2016 at 83. Some fans called the effect creepy. Goffe did not.
"I thought he was there, I thought he'd turned up!"
He called the result "magical, just magical" and said he could feel the old company with him, Wilder, Roy Kinnear, and the rest "sitting on our shoulders" as the next generation took the stage. The streamer has leaned hard into this kind of AI experiment before, including when it brought Wilder's voice back for Wonka programming.
Goffe's affection for Wilder was plain. He called him funny yet serious, a man who knew what he wanted and stayed gentle. Kinnear, who played Veruca Salt's father, was "a lovely fellow" who helped guide a first-time film actor who "didn't know what to do."
Ask him about later remakes and the answer is short. "Nothing beats Wonka." And: "Don't even mention Tim Burton!" The 2005 version featured a single Oompa Loompa. The 1971 film used ten actors of short stature. The Netflix line-up has nine and a wider mix of shapes and sizes, including 6ft 8in Australian Mitchell Marion, billed as the tallest Oompa yet.
Ben Goffe, 33, joined the cast after an agent email sought his father for a return after 55 years and then asked if the son wanted in too. Ben works steadily in panto, musicals, and film. He is set for the cast of Barnum and will play Buttons in a Dartford panto this Christmas. Brother Jack also works on stage and screen. Their mother, Sarah, a former dance teacher and now an international dance examiner, still gives notes.
On set, the Oompa performers were barred from speaking to contestants. Producers wanted the players kept inside the Wonka world. Ben put it simply.
"With the Netflix contestants, we weren't allowed to talk to them at all. The producers wanted to keep them in the world of Willy Wonka. We were sworn to secrecy."
The shoot ran roughly six weeks with only two rest days. For a family that has lived theater since Ben started school at age three, the grind was familiar. He still gets notes from both parents and says they are right about 95 percent of the time.
Goffe lives in Leighton Buzzard with Sarah. He was born in Herne Bay, Kent, in 1948. His résumé already spans Star Wars: A New Hope, Willow, and five Harry Potter films. The Netflix booking did not close the book. He wanted that on the record.
"Just in case Netflix, or anyone else, asks, please do make it clear I have not retired..."
Wonka's The Golden Ticket is on Netflix now. The article package labeled it a 2026 reality show and said it had been out about two weeks when Goffe spoke. Twelve pairs chase a life-changing prize inside a giant set. The narration borrows a dead star's voice. The chocolate looks clean.
That is the modern formula: scale, nostalgia, and technology. It arrives as the company faces harder questions about growth and costs, including coverage of how Netflix moved to cut hundreds of jobs after leadership admitted the expansion pace had slipped.
Goffe's interview cuts against the gloss. He remembers dirty water, scrap paper, cigarette ends, and powder that had to be scraped off skin. He remembers a gentle lead actor and a tight original company. He prefers that film to the later remake. He likes that this new show lets more people play dress-up Oompa if they can stand the orange makeup and green hair.
"I loved it," he said of the fresh turn. When the first movie landed, people wished they could be Oompa Loompas. The reality series, in his view, proves anyone can, with the right paint and wig.
Corporate Netflix will keep swinging between big swings and abrupt stops. It has pulled the plug on series after short runs, and it has drawn legal heat in cases such as when Florida sued Netflix over children's data practices. Leadership has also conceded that growth has been too slow while shares slid. None of that changes what Goffe brought to the interview: a working actor's memory of how the sausage, or the chocolate, was actually made.
The river was never magic. The people who stood in it, day after day, made the scene work anyway. That is the part the algorithm cannot fake.
