How famous voic­es became a sta­ple of Dis­ney animation

Who is your favourite ani­mat­ed char­ac­ter? How about your favourite voice in a Dis­ney film? A per­son­al favourite is the boom­ing, unmis­tak­ably silky tones of James Earl Jones as Mufasa in The Lion King. As soon as you hear it you know that this is the voice of a kind, strong father fig­ure. His warm yet pow­er­ful bari­tone forms a sort of son­ic blan­ket which instant­ly endears the char­ac­ter to us. It makes Mufasa’s death all the more sad and shock­ing: sud­den­ly that voice has gone.

Direc­tors Ron Clements and John Musker have been respon­si­ble for some of the best loved Dis­ney ani­mat­ed fea­tures, includ­ing The Lit­tle Mer­maid, Her­cules and Aladdin. Their 1986 film The Great Mouse Detec­tive fea­tures Vin­cent Price as the voice of the ter­ri­fy­ing Pro­fes­sor Rati­gan, yet it wasn’t until 1992 that Clements and Musker broke the mould by cast­ing a true A‑list celebri­ty in a lead role. ​“When we did Aladdin,” Clements reflects, ​“the idea of cast­ing a big star like Robin Williams real­ly hadn’t been done before. Angela Lans­bury was a star in Beau­ty and the Beast, but not quite on the same lev­el. Robin was a huge movie star; his career was arguably at its peak.”

Clements explains that he and Musker wrote the part of the Genie with Williams in mind: ​“We both thought that Robin would be per­fect for that char­ac­ter. He was a famous per­son but he was also the only actor we had in mind, so the role was designed for him.” The Genie is one of Disney’s best loved char­ac­ters, one that set the bench­mark for voice act­ing. Regard­less of an actor’s celebri­ty, how­ev­er, Clements and Musker insist that they always strive to find the best voice for any giv­en part: ​“We always want to find a great voice, some­one that real­ly fits that char­ac­ter and makes it come to life. That way you can inspire the ani­ma­tors and make the ani­ma­tion that much better.”

In the case of the Genie, Dis­ney ani­ma­tors would go into the stu­dio and sketch Robin Williams at work, as Musker recalls: ​“We would have ani­ma­tors gen­er­al­ly attend the voice ses­sions. Some­times we would video­tape the actors when they were record­ing their voiceovers so that the ani­ma­tors could go back lat­er and refer to their phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and per­for­mance.” Although it is not a pre­req­ui­site that an ani­mat­ed char­ac­ter must look like its actor coun­ter­part, some resem­blance can appar­ent­ly aid the ani­ma­tion process.

Musker reveals that in Aladdin, sim­i­lar­i­ties between the Genie and Williams had to be toned down, but there are bread­crumbs of Williams with­in the lines of the char­ac­ter: ​“Man­ner­isms and cer­tain facial expres­sions have crept into char­ac­ters or influ­enced the way they look. We did a very ear­ly ver­sion of the Genie that was very much influ­enced by Robin, and we realised it was too close to him. We want­ed the char­ac­ter to be a big meta­mor­phic guy, that’s big­ger than life and bald head­ed and bar­rel chest­ed. So his design was altered, although some of the facial fea­tures – the large jaw, the sharp nose and some expres­sion around the eyes – retained just a hint of Robin.”

In their new film Moana, Clements and Musker didn’t direct­ly draw any­thing from Dwayne Johnson’s phys­i­cal appear­ance for the char­ac­ter Maui, but they did bor­row a sig­na­ture expres­sion from his wrestling days: ​“Of course we took the people’s eye­brow, we put that in the ani­ma­tion as a shout out to Dwayne and a lit­tle in-joke to all his fans. He’s a big strong guy but oth­er than that we didn’t take Dwayne’s expres­sions or fea­tures and fit them onto Maui’s face.”

Robin Williams’ Genie is that rare, per­fect blend of charis­ma, com­ic tim­ing and famil­iar­i­ty, a tal­ent­ed actor ele­vat­ing Disney’s time-hon­oured ani­mat­ing skill. It’s no sur­prise that famous voic­es became a sta­ple of main­stream ani­ma­tion after Aladdin. You recog­nise the fact that it is, quite clear­ly, Robin Williams, and yet his larg­er-than-life per­son­al­i­ty com­pli­ments with­out ever over­shad­ow­ing the char­ac­ter or film. So, the next time you set­tle down with your favourite Dis­ney film, remem­ber to lis­ten care­ful­ly to the famous voice behind your favourite character.