Josh Gad, the voice of the snowman Olaf in the Disney movie Frozen, almost missed out on the chance of fulfilling his childhood dream. Ever since he was a kid, Gad has been obsessed with the Disney animated movies of the 80s and 90s, which was usually called Disney’s Second Golden Age. Gad particularly felt a strong connection with the side comic relief characters, like the Genie in Aladdin or Pumbaa and Timon in Lion King.
Gad was especially impressed with Robin Williams performance as the Genie in Aladdin. So much so that after watching the movie, he told his mother that that is exactly what he wants to do in his life. It were those goofy sidekicks that resonated with him and that was what he was attracted to.
Three years before the Frozen movie was released, Gad was called to take part in a reading for Anna and the Snow Queen. That was the name given to the movie then. This was one of the earliest attempts at adapting the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale into a full-length animated feature film. At that point, the story was much closer to the original fairytale and Olaf was a completely different character. However, Anna and the Snow Queen did not get the greenlight.
Although that was a huge disappointment to Gad, the Book of Mormon happened and he got nominated for a Tony. With that, lots of new opportunities opened for Gad and he decided to voice a character in an upcoming DreamWorks animated feature, Me and My Shadow. About the same time, Disney was looking to try their hands again on the Snow Queen and hired Bobby Lopez and his wife Kristen to write songs for the movie.
Now, Gad had already worked with Lopez in the Book of Mormon and they were huge fans of his. They wanted Gad to voice Olaf and soon after, DreamWorks decided to scrap the Me and My Shadow project after facing some serious story problems. As a result, Gad was free to return to Disney and voice Olaf.
When asked about his experience of being animated, Gad’s first response was that it was surreal. The animators used his facial expressions to bring the character to life. In fact, his face used to be recorded when he was doing the voice, so that his facial expressions at the time could be translated into the character. This has been done so incredibly that his two-year-old daughter immediately recognized Olaf as him in the teaser trailer of Frozen (which featured only his laugh) and that was the one of the most incredible experiences he has ever had.
The best thing about doing Olaf for Gad was that he was given room to play with the character. He improvised some lines and was given the freedom to do his version of things. His contributions were, in fact, kept in the movie. Gad was actually really surprised to see that the goofy stuff he did to make the creative team laugh actually found its way into the movie.
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