The Princess and the Frog

"[latest words before his taken away by policeman] [Big Daddy La Bouff: (furiously) Boys, dragged this maggot down to the perish prison.] I'm completely innocent! The Shadow Man bamboozled me!"

"A few years ago, Pixar had explored a version of The Frog Prince set in gangland Chicago. John Lasseter wanted to switch the locale to New Orleans, a city he loves, but the project was eventually shelved. Meanwhile Disney had explored various versions of The Frog Prince going all the way back to the time of Beauty and the Beast. In 2006, Disney bought the rights to a book called The Frog Princess, which was the fairy tale with a twist: when the Princess kissed the frog, she turned into a frog as well."

"Mama Odie was based on Ava Kay Jones, an ordained Voodoo Priestess who we met with in New Orleans. She told us that even though magic is part of the Voodoo religion, when people come to someone like her for help, she advises them to never use magic to solve their problems. That almost always backfires. Rather they should look inside themselves for the answers. Dr. Facilier was based on the New Orleans "Bokor". People who've broken away from the religion, made pacts with dark Voodoo spirits, and sell their magic for money. In terms of scariness, I think Facilier was handled similarly to our other villains like Ursula, Jafar, and Hades. We like scary stuff, but don't want to go too far. Some people thought Facilier was too scary."

"In earlier versions of our story, Mama Odie gave our heroine some gris-gris, herbal charms that got "energized" in the climax. We wound up rewriting that as our gris-gris felt like a bit of a deus ex machina. We do think of Facilier and his shadows as scary and were not trying to soft-pedal that. Some of his scariness we thought of as "funhouse" scary and not slasher film scary."

"Anika Noni Rose — Tiana"

"Bruno Campos — Prince Naveen"

"Keith David — Dr. Facilier"

"Michael-Leon Wooley — Louis the Gator"

"Jennifer Cody — Charlotte "Lottie" La Bouff"

"James J. Cummings — Ray the Firefly"

"Jenifer Lewis — Mama Odie"

"Peter Bartlett — Lawrence"

"John Goodman — Eli "Big Daddy" La Bouff"

"Oprah Winfrey — Eudora"

"Terrence Howard — James"

"Frank W. Welker — Stella"

"Dee Baker — Juju"

"Corey Burton Jerry Kernion — The Fenner Brothers"

"Kevin M. Richardson — Ian the Gator"

"Emeril Lagasse — Marlon the Gator"