from 2010
ZACHARY LEVI
talks about his work as the voice of Flynn Rider in "Tangled"
click here for Mandy Moore interview
click here for Composer Alan Menken interview

by Scott Wolf

It's always fun to meet a fellow Disney fan, and the fact that Zachary Levi and I were both singing "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet" by the end of our interview, tells you something about him! But Zach is not just another Disney fan, he's the voice of Flynn Rider in Disney's 50th animated feature, "Tangled." It was really fun to sit down with Zach and learn about this accomplished actor's dream role and it's really fun to share our conversation with you.

Scott Wolf: You know, you character Flynn actually looks quite a bit like you. Is that a coincidence?

Zachary Levi: Yeah, you know I’ve gotten that question a lot because people see he’s a brunette and incredibly handsome (he says obviously jokingly), and he seems very intelligent and talented and could do so many things - MUST have been modeled after you, and I tell them everything other than the looks.

But no, he was already designed. I saw artwork as I was going in to audition, like they already had the artwork so it was just kind of a happy accident I think. Clearly Mandy and Rapunzel look very different. I mean blonde/brunette, also 80 feet of hair.

SW: Did you get to work with Mandy?

ZL: I think it was twice – once for some music and once for some dialogue. We did the duet together. First we got to rehearse with the orchestra which was unbelievable! I grew up watching all of these movies and like a lot of behind-the-scenes supplemental footage, or supplemental footage for not even Disney movies but other movies that have giant orchestral pieces and you go, “Wow, that’s like a giant sound stage, and all these people” and then I walk in there on a Saturday or whenever it was and sure enough there’s like 70 pieces in there and it sounds so incredible and you just feel like, “Wow, I’m really doing this, this is really happening right now.” Then they put us in our little iso booths and then we sing along with them.

SW: I would’ve thought the orchestra would have been prerecorded. So you actually sang with them while they performed live?

ZL: Yeah. We did just to rehearse, so they got a feel for us and we got a feel for them, and then it was separately recorded like you would imagine.

SW: Have you ever done any professional singing before this?

ZL: No, I grew up doing all kinds of musical theater and so I’ve sung for many, many years of my life, but when the divergence of like where do I go with a career, and that kind of question was circling around, acting was just working out that way and so I was like, okay, I’m going to step that way, and so far so good. But I definitely want to do music more. I think God gives you the talents that you have to use in some way, shape or form, whether or not they pay off in any career or monetary way, I don’t know, but I don’t think you should sit on them. I think even if it’s for your own sake, if you like to doodle or sing or dance, whatever, do it. Because if you just let it sit in you, talent festers, it’s not good. I love singing, I sing every day at some point, whether it’s just to myself or where other people can hear me, but this was pretty much the first thing that I’d ever done that was a job where I was singing.

Then almost right after this, Katharine McPhee is a friend of mine and she had asked me to do a duet with her to re-record one of the duets that she had on her album, and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds like a lot fun,” so we did that. So maybe all those things and more will bring me to do so more music in my day or not. Certainly at the very least I’d like to go to Broadway one day and do some musical theater out there. I miss theater a lot.

SW: Well, you’re already singing Alan Menken’s songs.

ZL: I’m telling you what! Dude, are you kidding me? I freaked out when I found out Alan Menken was doing this! Not only could I sing all the songs from “Aladdin,” but I could recite the whole movie of “Aladdin,” and at one point I could sing all the songs to “Little Mermaid,” I’d sing all the songs to “Beauty and the Beast,” but I could sing every word of every song to “Newsies,” and a lot of people couldn’t do that. When I found out Alan Menken did “Newsies,” I didn’t know that. Again, when I was learning all this I was a kid. Credits don’t mean anything to you, and then when I found Alan Menken was doing the music on this, I was like, “Alan Menken – I know that name. Why do I know that name?” And then IMDB (internet movie database), “Oh my god!” Everything that I loved! It was amazing. It was one of those dawning moments where it’s like holy crap, this guy had written music that has been so near and dear to my heart and now I get to sing, from the same source, I’m getting to sing that music, that’s ridiculous.

SW: What was the audition process like for you?

ZL: I got a call that said, “Hey, they’re doing the new Disney animated musical, it’s ‘Rapunzel,’ and would you like to read for the male lead? They probably only got to the “New Disney animated-” “Yes! I’d like to do it. If at all possible, can I please get in on that?”

So they were like, “Okay, great. You have to prepare one song, something in the vein of a singer-songwriter. So I chose “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor, it was just one of the first things that came to mind and I love James Taylor and I love the song and it fit the singer-songwriter mold. So yeah, I get the character, I get the funny in all this, and the heart in this and worked over my song and came in – a lot of actors will probably tell you the same thing, or not just actors, anybody, you’ve got to go in at a job interview or whatever, you try to enjoy it the most you can and be yourself as best you can and be malleable because they’re going to have ideas that you’re going to have to possibly incorporate, so I just did that and they said, “Great, if you could go wait back in the waiting room,” and I did, and they came back out and they said, “Here is the music for ‘At Last I See the Light.’ Go over this, and can you come back tomorrow or the day after that?” or something like that, so I made it past that round, I was like, “Great,” so I went over that and was stoked about that music, and that’s when I knew, “Oh yeah! This is Alan Menken!” I loved the song and came back in and did it for him and pretty soon after that they said, “We’d like you to be Flynn Rider.”

SW: When did you have to read the dialogue?

ZL: Part of the first audition was just dialogue and then to sing whatever song you had chosen and prepared. Then the second time in wasn’t dialogue, it was just to see if what voice they heard doing your own thing could fit into what their mold was for theirs.

SW: Did you alter your voice at all for the role?

ZL: A little bit. It was one of those things where if it was set in modern day I probably wouldn’t have, but because it’s set in this very fantastical world, medieval, renaissance, whatever, and Flynn, though he comes from very humble beginnings as Eugene Fitzherbert, Flynn Rider is the charade that he plays, he tries to put on this posh, more refined thing, so I felt it was only necessary to have a little bit, mid-Atlantic kind of a thing to him, so it’s a little effective, but it’s still me. But I think it’s effective enough that people have come out of the trailer not knowing that I’ve been in it, and about halfway through the trailer they go, “This is like Zach,” and then they realize it is me and then I get a text right before whatever they’re about to watch at Arclight, they go, “Dude! You’re in ‘Tangled’? That’s crazy, man!”

Mandy Moore talks about her role as the voice of Rapunzel in"Tangled"
Composer Alan Menken talks about his work on "Tangled" and other Disney work

See other interviews