As somebody who has interviewed many people involved in animated movies at studios like Disney and Pixar, one of the more interesting things I've learned about the process is the way that, unlike live-action films, the script is never truly done. Stories can change quite drastically in the middle of animation, requiring rewrites, the scrapping of old animation, re-recording dialogue, and even recasting voice actors. This has been the case since Disney’s first feature-length animated film, and it was no different when the Disney studio celebrated its 100th anniversary with the release of Wish.
I had the chance to speak with Angelique Cabral, the voice of Queen Amaya in Wish ahead of the film's Digital release on January 23. She told me that when she initially auditioned for the role she was auditioning to play Wish’s actual villain. But then when she was called back, while her character was the same, the role was very different. Carbal explained…
Yeah, yeah. When I first got this audition actually, it was now almost like two years ago. She was an evil queen, and Magnifico was a good king. And she was the evil. And then, by the callback round, I would say, they had changed her character pretty completely and she was a grounded maternal, benevolent queen who was completely different than the first audition I did. So I had to really change my take on her. And I dressed completely differently and I changed my voice.
It isn’t that unusual for characters to go through significant changes like this. However, frequently when a change in story changes a character, it ends up changing a lot more. Most of the voice cast of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur was replaced when that story changed the characters significantly. The same thing happened to the lead role in Raya and the Last Dragon when Kelly Marie Tran took over the role after another actress had originally been cast. We don't know what upcoming Disney movie is even on the 2024 movie release schedule, but we can be sure it went through similar changes.
And it makes some sense for Wish to have an evil queen. A lot of Wish is, very intentionally, a throwback to the days of classic Disney, and the best Disney animated movies. Evil queens, and evil women in general, were common antagonists for the studio's female protagonists. Wish includes a lot of classic Disney references and this one certainly would not have been out of place.
While the decision to make Magnifico the villain of Wish certainly changed the story, it also changed everything about Angelique Cabral’s callback. Now that she wasn’t playing the movie’s evil queen, she completely transformed everything about the way she performed the character, which in this case was more than just the voice. Cabral continued…
These auditions people don't understand, but Chris Buck requested, the director likes to see the actors act it, not just their voice. So this was not like a voiceover where I'm like, talking into a microphone. This was full body, live-action audition. I had to sing and then also do these, I think nine or 10 pages of sides. So it was pretty it was a pretty intense audition. Yeah, she changed a lot. And then even in the recording of it, she changed. I'd say each time it was a little different.
In the final film, Queen Amaya becomes a woman who is forced to deal with her husband's transition into darkness and must decide what to do about that, making her one of the more interesting characters in the film. If you missed the movie in theaters, Wish arrives on Digital platforms on January 23 and will be released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on March 12.
