Kirsty Paterson became a global meme in 2024 for looking miserable at a catastrophic Willy Wonka event she had nothing to do with organizing. Netflix has now made her the face of its Wonka reality competition, and the job that started it moved her to Australia.
The woman in the green wig is smiling now.
Kirsty Paterson, who became known worldwide as the “Sad Oompa Loompa” after a disastrous Willy Wonka event in Glasgow, is fronting the promotional campaign for Netflix’s new reality series Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.
“I used to think I would always be a sad Oompa Loompa,” she says in the promo, filmed on the show’s set, “until one day everything changed.”
Netflix captioned the clip: “We found the Sad Oompa Loompa and gave her the Wonka experience she deserves.”
She answered an ad for circus work.
Willy’s Chocolate Experience took place at a Glasgow warehouse on February 24, 2024, organized by a company called House of Illuminati. Families paid £35 a head for what was billed as the place where chocolate dreams become reality.
They found a sparsely decorated warehouse with a rainbow, a bouncy castle, a handful of jelly babies, and roughly half a cup of lemonade each. Parents called the police.
Paterson was one of several performers hired for the day. The job had been advertised as circus performing.
“I had a bad gut feeling as soon as I went there,” she told NPR two months later.
The photo was taken by a stranger who later regretted it
The image that circled the world came from another attendee.
Louise Dalson, then 28, from Dundee, photographed Paterson looking dejected beside the sparse setup. It racked up millions of views within days and became one of 2024’s defining internet images.
Dalson later said she felt bad about sharing it.
The event became large enough that Tory MP Penny Mordaunt referenced it in the House of Commons, and a mural inspired by the fiasco went up on Clyde Street in Glasgow.
She was named, and it wasn’t great
Paterson has been open about what the attention actually felt like.
“I went viral for doing a very bad job, but it was very last minute and not my fault,” she said. “A really bad photo was taken and went viral.”
The timing made it worse. “I had just gone through a break-up, was living back with my parents, and then I went viral,” she said. “I was so embarrassed at first, as I was named and everything. It was a big low for me.”
An appearance on Good Morning Britain shifted things. “People saw I was actually good to the kids and started realising it wasn’t my fault,” she said. “I just picked up that job.”
Netflix flew her to Australia and she stayed
Netflix contacted Paterson about the series some time ago and asked her to travel to Australia last year for promotional filming on the Gold Coast.
She decided not to come back.
Paterson now lives in Melbourne, where she hosts a radio programme and works as a tour guide alongside acting. She is also a part-time yoga teacher and, per her own account, a fire breather.
A photograph of a bad afternoon in a Glasgow warehouse ended with her emigrating.
“The whole reality of my whole experience since the Willy Wonka thing really is me winning the golden ticket in life,” she said.
She owns the character now
She posts as “Scottish Oompah Loompah” and has glammed up the look, trading the original wig for a shinier green one.
“I just used it as a character. That is not me, but it is my branding,” she said. “That made me feel better.”
The recognition followed her across the planet. “I moved to the other side of the world and I still get recognised for being the Oompa Loompa Lass,” she said. “People tend to say ‘I know you but I don’t know where from,’ and the room goes crazy when I tell them.”
Before the Netflix gig, she appeared in an Edinburgh Fringe show based on her experience, headlined a tongue-in-cheek Los Angeles recreation of the Glasgow event, and turned up on The Last Leg and 60 Minutes Australia.
What the Netflix show actually is
Wonka’s The Golden Ticket is billed as a one-of-a-kind reality competition, in which players step inside a recreated chocolate factory to face what Netflix describes as unpredictable games, tests, and temptations.
The show debuts on September 23.
Two and a half years after a warehouse in Glasgow made her the internet’s saddest person, an actual Wonka production put her in an actual chocolate factory.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
The Scotsman (September 17, 2026), the Netflix series involvement, Paterson’s quotes, the Gold Coast filming, and her relocation to Melbourne
Yahoo News UK (November 2025), Paterson’s extended account of the viral aftermath, her quotes about the break-up and the branding, and her current work in Australia
NPR (April 2024), Ayesha Rascoe’s interview including Paterson’s account of arriving at the Glasgow event
Evening Telegraph and Glasgow Times (March and April 2024), the event details, the House of Illuminati organization, Louise Dalson’s photograph and her later regret, the Penny Mordaunt reference, and the Clyde Street mural
GlasgowWorld (September 17, 2026), the promotional video details and Netflix’s caption
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