Frozen 2 could have ended up a childhood trauma scar for a generation of kids on the level of Bambi’s mom if some key details had stayed in the picture. According to Olaf actor, Josh Gad, his character’s death scene in the original script was so brutal, it left kids in the test screenings “fully traumatized.” Which is…not exactly what Disney was looking for in the follow-up to the juggernaut first film.
According to Entertainment Weekly, however, that’s what they nearly got. In his newly released memoir, In Gad We Trust, the actor explains that in the “truly stunning,” “first version [of the death], Olaf himself was scared and confused by what was happening.” Their “commitment to the brutality of Olaf’s naïveté about all things,” he explained, “made our intended audience scared for Olaf, rather than emotional.”
Imagine coming in to film Frozen 2 and your first day at work is recording this death scene?! According to Gad, though, that’s exactly what it was.
How ‘Frozen 2’s Olaf Death Scene Changed, From Script To Screen
When an actor signs on to as buzzy and big a project as the sequel to Frozen, they often don’t see the script or know the full details until it’s time to start production. “During the very early days of the film,” Gad wrote, “none of us knew what the hell the movie was about.” And it was on that first day back that he not only learned of, but was asked to perform, the death of Olaf.
According to Gad:
“I got to the studio and Jenn slow-rolled me into the day’s material. As I looked at the scene, the first thing I saw was ‘Olaf begins to flurry away.’ I read further. ‘Anna sobs’ and ‘Olaf looks to her for help.’ I looked at Jenn. ‘Wait — are we…?’ With tears in her eyes, she nodded her head and said, ‘Yes.'”
“Jenn and I started recording the dialogue and I couldn’t get through it without sobbing. Those first recordings were brutal, and I remember feeling that we were doing something that was going to pack a serious punch.”
“By the end of the recording,” as Gad put it, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” adding that during a FaceTime call with his wife, “she couldn’t tell if we were recording a sequel to Frozen or Sophie’s Choice,” given his tear-stained appearance. This continued to be the case during test screenings where, according to Gad, “Olaf’s death scene was causing absolute havoc with the younger viewers. They were apparently sobbing, screaming, and fully traumatized by the extended sequence and the tone of the scene.”
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The actor was told by writer/director Jennifer Lee that Disney’s Bob Iger summed it up thusly:
“Olaf is a child. You can’t just willy-nilly kill a scared child, because the children watching will see themselves in him.”
Which is a very fair and astute observation! Which is what led to Lee rewriting the scene as more hopeful, with Olaf excited for his next great adventure, comforting Anna (Kristen Bell) in the process — before ultimately disappearing and then reappearing thanks to the winter-y magic of Idina Menzel’s Elsa. “It was one of the lightbulb moments and creatively brilliant pivots that Jenn and the Frozen team are known for at this point,” Gad added. And proof that the creative team behind the movies follow their own advice and know that sometimes, you’ve got to let it go and head into the unknown.
We’ll have to wait until 2027 to see where that takes us, when Frozen 3 is set to release.
Release Date
November 22, 2019
Runtime
103 minutes
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