“When Veruca says, ‘Buy!’ it’s like a battle cry,” and her father just has to bow down to her demands. However, in Johnny Depp’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, things didn’t go quite as Veruca Salt wanted them to when her father could not get her one of Willy Wonka’s trained squirrels.
Instead of letting go, Veruca decided to take things into her own hands and walked onto the field only to get deemed a “bad nut” by the squirrels. She is then taken into the garbage chute which leads to the incinerator. If you think that was enough nightmare fuel, you couldn’t be more wrong. As it turns out, the squirrels in the scene weren’t CGI and were, in fact, real trained squirrels attacking Veruca’s actress, Julia Winter’s stunt double.
How Johnny Depp’s Film Utilized Squirrels and Technology
Filmmaker Tim Burton is known for his unique style which often provides a very eerie element to his movies. The 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp was no exception. Seeing most of the children face a horrible fate, one by one, was pretty horrifying if you think about it. The fact that Willy Wonka stood there watching or the Oompa Loompas always had a personalized song ready to go did not help either.
Actress Julia Winter played the role of the rich, spoiled kid, Veruca Salt, who got taken away by squirrels. To our surprise, those squirrels were not CGI. According to Los Angeles Times, Burton wanted 100 real squirrels for the scene but was only able to score forty rescue squirrels. These squirrels were then multiplied in number with animatronics, computer graphics, and multiple images. However, the squirrels close to Winter were made using CGI. But the actress, who was eight years old at the time, wasn’t the one attacked by the angry squirrels. It was her stunt double.
In an interview, Winter thought that the coolest props on the set were the squirrels. She stated,
“They were trained for six months to crack open nuts, dump them, and throw nuts over their shoulders. And run at my stunt double’s body. And, and, this is funny…kick my dad’s, James Fox’s, b*tt.”
We are glad the stunt doubles and the actors weren’t harmed during filming.
How Were the Squirrels Trained?
It couldn’t have been easy to train forty squirrels to do as you say, could it? That is why, Burton had senior animal trainer, Mike Alexander, jump in for the task. The first three weeks of training went into making the squirrels comfortable with their trainers and their crates.
After that was achieved, they were each taught how to sit on a bar stool, tap on the walnut, and open it. The squirrels were also taught how to toss the meat of the walnut onto the conveyer belt. As per Alexander, the squirrels were divided into categories – the smart ones would crack the nuts and the rest were assigned to attack Winter’s stunt double.
To make things more personal, each of the forty rescue squirrels was given a unique name. We really cannot fathom the time, energy, and dedication that go into filming a scene that only lasts for a few minutes!
You can rent/buy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Prime Video.
Source: Los Angeles Times
