During a January 2020 episode of the “Life is Short” podcast, hosted by actor Justin Long, Ginnifer Goodwin shared that Disney was interested in casting her as Anna in “Frozen.” She explained that she “was part of the original read-through process of ‘Frozen’ like 400,000 years ago.” She went on to say that it “hurt” when she “did not get the call to keep going.” Goodwin then suggested she got offered to play Judy Hopps, a hard-working rabbit who joins the police force, in “Zootopia” because of her reading for Anna.
“I was then delighted that I got the call that I was instead going to be doing ‘Zootopia,’ and this was 2013, I got the call,” said the “Something Borrowed” star. While speaking to Long, the actress also shared that the film originally focused on the fox, Nick Wilde, played by Jason Bateman. “I was just going to be this sidekick,” said Goodwin.
She explained that the cast had “recorded [‘Zootopia’] for a couple years” until it was “completely rewritten.” Goodwin also shared that while recording the film’s “original version,” she had been “making very strong choices” with her voice acting and “was trying to sound like Holly Hunter.” The actress joked that members of the production team had asserted that they “would have called Holly Hunter” if they wanted her voice for Judy.
“‘Holly Hunter does Holly Hunter very, very well. So we don’t really need you to do a bad version,'” quipped Goodwin with a laugh.