Alan Tudyk was raised on Disney movies, though perhaps not the ones you would expect. "My earliest memories of Disney movies were not animated," the prolific voice actor says. "I loved the Herbie the Love Bug movies. Mary Poppins was a favorite. Also, The Apple Dumpling Gang — Don Knotts and Tim Conway as the worst bank robbers in the world, meeting their match in a group of orphan kids was right up my alley. These were the movies of our household."
Tudyk began voicing characters for Walt Disney Animation Studios more than a decade ago: He voiced King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph (2012), and then the Duke of Weseltont in Frozen (2013), Duke Weaselton in Zootopia (2016), Heihei in Moana (2016), and Tuk Tuk in Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), among others. His latest Disney movie is Wish, in which he lends his voice to a pajama-wearing goat named Valentino.
Over the years, Tudyk has become known as the studio's "good luck charm."
"It's nice to hear, although I am hoping no one there really believes it. The 'luck,' with Disney animated movies, is hard won by the collective work of an enormous group of talented artists, writers, animators, story board consultants, directors, and so on and so forth," the actor demurs. "What my involvement over years has gifted me is trust between myself and those many other Disney artists. My status, at best, is as an equal. In a room of Disney artists, that is a high bar."
Below, Tudyk shares with A.frame his Top 5.
Directed by: Mel Brooks | Written by: Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks
When I first saw Young Frankenstein, I couldn't believe it. It had great actors playing straight in extremely ridiculous situations. So much of it is broad comedy, but the style of the filming and the commitment of the actors to the truth of the story elevated it from a silly spoof to a high art form. Also, Gene Wilder. He became the actor I looked to as proof a redhead could make it in movies.
Directed and Written by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker
I was 9 when I saw Airplane! in the movie theater. I remember walking out of the matinee showing into the hot Texas sun being almost speechless. I was trying to recall all of the funny moments and lines, but there were too many to recall, and my brain was straining under the excitement. Plus, there were boobs! Unnecessary, unmotivated, unashamed, for-a-laugh silly boobs. Magic. The world changed that day. I was changed that day — beautifully twisted and changed.
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich | Written by: Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton
A classic screw ball comedy, and Madeline Kahn's first movie! There are so many great character actors in this movie that you will forgive me if I use the term "cavalcade." What's Up, Doc? has a cavalcade of the best character actors of the day, or any day really: Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, Mabel Albertson, John Hillerman, Liam Dunn, and Sorrell Booke (aka Boss Hog) — even Emmit Walsh makes an appearance as a gum-smacking cop. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal are the leads, and they do a swell job, but it is the supporting cast that makes this movie for me.
Directed by: Frank Oz | Written by: Howard Ashman
No one else could have directed this movie with so much humor and fun while maintaining so much genuine heart except Frank Oz. It was a play to begin with, and that feeling of a show being performed is maintained without taking you out of the world. The puppetry of the plant is incredible for the practical pre-VFX era and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops knocks it out of the park with his voice. Ellen Greene as Audrey lets us see the cracks in her character that lead her to accepting the murderous vegetative situation, and Rick Moranis is in top form. I saw it in the theater and went and bought the soundtrack on my way home. I still listen to it today, decades later.
Directed by: Bob Fosse | Written by: Robert Alan Aurthur and Bob Fosse
This film is so meta. This is an autobiographical movie written, directed, and choreographed by Bob Fosse. It is the story of a stage and film director and choreographer named Joe Gideon, who is a workaholic who has a few other "holics" to round out his hard-charging lifestyle. Fosse cast his girlfriend, Anne Reinking, as Joe Gideon's girlfriend. He has Joe Gideon cheat on his girlfriend, just like Bob Fosse was known to cheat on Reinking.
Fact and fiction overlap while musical numbers are woven throughout all in humorously sexualized Fosse style. It skewers the show business world of Joe Gideon and simultaneously of Bob Fosse, and then he kills himself — or kills Joe Gideon — from a life of careless excess for not listening to the better judgment of those around him, which in life Fosse ultimately did as well. Epic!
