If Hugh Grant could turn back the hands of time to avoid laying eyes on a pic of a naked Oompa Loompa, we’re pretty sure he would.
The English actor, who stars as one of the famous miniature workers from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory in the new “Wonka” movie, told People that the film’s director, Paul King, surprised him with the startling image to “amuse him.”
Grant joked that the pic, which featured an early version of the character without clothes, “shocked” his kids.
“Paul, quite early on in the editing process, sent me a mock-up of the Oompa Loompa stark naked. And my little children were a little alarmed at that,” Grant, 63, said.
But as King explained to People, the image “was very delicately pixelated.”
“There was nothing untoward. It’s just something once you’ve seen, you can’t unsee it,” the director clarified.
King explained that the image came to be while he and the visual effects team were tweaking details of the figure, including “the colour of the skin and the way the hair works,” which meant a bare Oompa Loompa at that stage of animation.
“It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life,” King, who previously teamed up with Grant for 2017′s “Paddington 2,” said with a laugh. “If it ever leaks out, a generation of children will be scarred.”
Earlier this week, Grant complained to journalists that he hated playing an Oompa Loompa in the film.
“I made a big fuss about it,” Grant told Metro of dealing with the intricacies of shooting scenes with computer-generated imagery. “I couldn’t have hated the whole thing more.”
As to why he stuck around for the gig, “I have lots of children and need money,” he said.
“Wonka,” a prequel to Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and its two film adaptations, hits theaters Dec. 15.