Every actor waits for their big break, but they typically don’t come after a performance fails spectacularly. Leave it to “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” the immersive, theatrical Wonka-adjacent event in Glasgow that went viral this past February for being so poorly run that the Scottish police were called, to defy expectations yet again. Felicia Dawkins, the sixteen-year-old actress who portrayed the event’s spookiest character—a metallic-masked, evil chocolatier who lives in the walls and is referred to only as “The Unknown”—is now taking her talent to London where she’ll make a guest appearance in the haunted house tourist attraction the London Dungeon on April 7.
In an interview with the New York Times, sixteen-year old Dawkins opened up about how the disastrous Willy Wonka-themed event has changed her life for the better. Before Willy’s Chocolate Experience, Dawkins was just a normal high school girl. “My favorite subject in school — I really love drama, which is very cliché,” she said. “I like P.E., as well. I’m quite physical. I’m a Scout as well, in my free time.” The Chocolate Experience gig came her way via a family friend who worked for House of Illumination, the production company behind the event, and she took the job in order to pay for a Scout trip to Norway. (Dawkins was supposed to make £500, but was only paid £250.)
What was supposed to be a fun experience for the teen quickly devolved into something of a horror show. Dawkins told the Times she was “so, so nervous” once she received the script because it was AI-generated gibberish. “I’m quite good at learning lines. But seeing that, I was like, there’s no way I can learn this in, like, a night,” she said. “And because the script was A.I. generated, most of it didn’t even make sense. So it was harder for me to learn, so I just had to improvise it.”
Things didn’t get better when Dawkins arrived to the Box Hub, a warehouse event space in Glasgow. “When I first got there and I seen the set, I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be a disaster,’” said Dawkins. She and her fellow actors were able to appease the event’s disappointed patrons for about an hour before it became an unmitigated disaster. “When people started to come in — like the first, I’d say, 45 minutes went relatively well — like, people seemed to be enjoying it. But then after that, it just lost all the organization, and then it just went completely downhill from there. And I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh!’”
Her improvisational skills and commitment under extremely trying circumstances caught the eye of Richard Quincey, the head of performance at London Dungeon and South Bank Attractions. “We could see she has a real passion and talent, for theater and interactions with guests,” he said in a statement. Now, Dawkins is taking her beloved character to London—or so she thinks. “I’m so, so excited. I think I’m just going to be The Unknown at the event,” she said. “I’m not quite sure, though, but I think that’s who I am.”
Dawkins amassed millions of views on TikTok after revealing that she was actually behind “The Unknown” after others tried to take credit for her performance. “Nobody knew, really, that I was The Unknown,” she said. “I told a couple of my close friends, but when people on TikTok started to come forward and say that they were The Unknown, I was like, “No you’re not, because I’m The Unknown.” And more and more people started doing it, and they were getting loads of the likes, and loads of clout, and loads of money from it. So I was like, I just have to come out and show that I was the 16-year-old girl that did that.”
Luckily, her family has been helping her manage all of the attention she’s receiving, which can be “overwhelming,” Dawkins said. Her favorite part of sudden internet fame? “I’ve been getting sent loads of fan art and loads of merch,” she said. ”That has to be like the number one thing — that people are taking time out of their day to make stuff for me and sending it to me.” While the next thing on her agenda is London’s Dungeon, Dawkins says she hopes to find herself “hopefully on the stage” in 10 years. Well, after a rocky beginning, it seems like she’s off to a great start.
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