THE actor who played Willy Wonka during the viral Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience in Scotland has said he was "told to hide" when parents became furious.

Priced at £35 a ticket, the experience promised a “paradise of sweet treats” as well as “mind-expanding projections and optical marvels” - but parents made complaints to Police Scotland following outrage at the event, with one child left in tears.

Organisers proceeded to pull the plug halfway through the first day after the reaction and now one of the actors, Paul Connell, has taken to social media to explain his side of the story.

In three TikTok videos, Connell told his side of the hiring process and preparation for the event.

READ MORE: Willy Wonka Glasgow: How a bizarre Scottish event went viral around the world

He said he was hired to play the titular character at the “Wonka’s Chocolate Experience fiasco”, but attendees got him “in a top hat, in a dirty warehouse in Glasgow” instead of the “magical chocolate experience” they had been sold online with AI-generated advertisement.

Connell added: “People who wanted Timothe Chalamet and got Timothe Charlatan.”

He said: “So the first red flag for me when I was cast as Willy Wonka – anyone who looks at me and thinks Willy Wonka and not Oompa Loompa is out of their mind.

“I got cast as the part on the Thursday and was told that I need to learn the script for the Friday, so I said, ‘no problem, send it over’. The script was 15 pages - monologue – pretty much of AI generated gibberish.”

Connell added: “We turned up as a group of actors on the Saturday morning and saw what this was. You could say it was world of imagination as you had to imagine it was not a dirty old warehouse.

“We walked around this place and just saw a health and safety nightmare for a start.”

The National: The event was cancelled half-way through the first day but parents were not notified

He described the actors coming together to talk after seeing the venue, and they all believed it was “unlikely” they would receive payment for the event but decided to “stick around” and “do our best to make sure the children have some kind of experience”.

Connell cut several sections of the script after being told to “improvise” without the special effects.

Every 45 minutes they would get a 15-minute break, but Connell proceeded to play Wonka for “four hours straight”. He shared that he finally sat in his car for his lunch break but when he returned, “people were furious”.

He said: “When I came back in that’s when things had got a little bit out of control. Rightfully so, people were furious, they were shouting, filming things on their phone, things were being broken, things were being stolen apparently.

“I just walked in after my lunch and was told to hide. Which I was like, what just happened?”

Connell shared part of the script that he learned with viewers, saying he wasn’t going to “do the Willy Wonka” voice as he had “embarrassed” himself enough this week.

READ MORE: Police Scotland called amid anger at Willy Wonka experience

The line shared was: “There is a man who lives here, his name is not known so we call him the unknown. The unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls”.

Connell said performing the line with “gusto and validity” was a “challenge”.

He added: “We were told on the experience to hand out a jelly bean, one jelly bean per child, and a quarter of a cup of Tesco’s own brand lemonade. That was what the children got. No chocolate. There was no chocolate to be had at this chocolate factory.”

The actor told of his experience with the press following videos going viral and concluded his three-part telling by saying it was “one of the most embarrassing things to have ever happened” to him.

He added that he hoped people got “something out of it other than one jelly bean” and that refunds are processed because it was “an absolute mess”.