During a recent interview with BBC Radio 4, Roald Dahl’s widow, Liccy Dahl, revealed that the main character in his beloved classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was meant to be a black child. 

The classic children's book was adapted into two films— 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—- and featured a white actor for the main protagonist Charlie Bucket in both. 

In the Sept. 13 interview, Liccy Dahl said that the book was originally conceived with “a little black boy.” As to why that was changed, she said, “I don’t know. It’s a great pity.” Liccy also revealed that Dahl was not too happy about the original adaptation of his book either. 

"He wasn't very happy about Charlie, the original with Gene Wilder," she said of the film, released in 1971. No one knows why he disliked the film though. 

According to The Huffington Post, the character change came about because of Dahl's book agent Sheila St. Lawrence convinced him on the belief that white readers would not understand why Charlie Bucket was black. “She said people would ask ‘Why?’” Dahl’s biographer Donald Sturrock told Vanity Fair in 2014.

This revelation means that it is quite possible the whole Bucket family was meant to be black too. Liccy Dahl hinted in the BBC interview that the character's race should be fixed.

But that wasn't the only racial controversy surrounding the book. When the book was first released, the Oompa Loompa characters were meant to be African pygmies that were eventually changed into the orange -colored workers we now know.

“I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were … most unpleasant,” Dahl said.  

Now knowing this, don't you agree that we need a reboot? It's only right.

Charlie and the Chocolate FactoryRoald Dahlwilly wonka and the chocolate factory cast