We’ll never let it go! Over a year after it first hit the big screen, Disney’s animated film Frozen has become a modern classic. Josh Gad, who voiced goofy snowman Olaf in the film, called the movie “one of [his] proudest achievements,” during a visit to HuffPost Live on Jan. 14. Gad, who’s starring alongside Kevin Hart in the upcoming comedy The Wedding Ringer, discussed finding inspiration for Olaf in Robin Williams, and divulged his young daughter’s reaction to the film.
Gad, 33, said growing up watching Disney’s 1992 classic animated movie Aladdin – Williams, of course, voiced Genie – inspired him when he first began reading for the character of Olaf.
“Seeing what Robin Williams did with that role, god bless his soul, it was one of those things where it just really, really, really inspired me,” the father of two revealed. “I knew I wanted to do that, I wanted to create this comic relief, this force of nature like that, one day in an animated movie.”
Gad didn’t even audition for the role, and was attached to the film before it even became the Frozen we now know and love. He first read for the part of Olaf before even originating the role of Elder Cunningham in Broadway’s The Book of Mormon in March 2011.
“At that time it was called Anna and The Snow Queen, and I was brought in to read the role of Olaf, which was the only existing character that actually lasted when they changed it to Frozen,” said Gad. “I guess the creative team just felt like it was the right match, and from that point, I sort of stayed in the back of their heads.”
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Gad’s daughters with wife Ida Darvish, Ava, 4, and Isabelle, 11 months, have both seen their Dad’s Disney hit, but it was Ava’s reaction in particular that stuck with the actor.
“She [Ava] knew from the second that I took her to her first movie she ever saw in a theater, it was Monsters University, and they had a teaser attached to it for Frozen,” he said, laughing. “And at that time Olaf had no dialogue, I just laughed, she literally just heard me laugh and she goes ‘that’s dada, more dada’ and I buried my head and I started crying.”
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