‘Pocahontas’: The Disney animation that almost featured John Candy
It seems as though every high-profile star in Hollywood ends up voicing a character in a major animated movie eventually, but it was decided by Disney that trying to replace John Candy was impossible, leading to a complete overhaul of the character poised to have him step into the recording booth.
No stranger to a vocal performance or two, Candy had previously lent his dulcet tones to 1981’s cult classic anthology Heavy Metal in various capacities, as well as playing a talking horse in 1988’s Hot to Trot, which saw him sparring opposite Bobcat Goldthwait in the rather bizarre story of a man who inherits an unusually talkative equine named Don from his deceased father.
His first brush with Disney’s animation department put him onto the path for what would have been his most prominent voice-only gig yet, with Candy bringing Wilbur the albatross to life in The Rescuers Down Under, which was co-directed by Mike Gabriel.
For his next feature, Gabriel would then be partnered with Eric Goldberg on Pocahontas, which sought to capitalise on and maintain the Mouse House’s two-dimensional momentum that had knocked out a string of classics in rapid succession, with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King all releasing within five years of each other.
The star-studded cast saw Irene Bedard’s title character lent support by Mel Gibson, Christian Bale, and Billy Connolly, among others, with Candy lined up to play an anthropomorphised turkey called Redfeather. In the end, following his death on the set of Wagons East in March 1994, the animal sidekick was ultimately excised from the screenplay, partly out of respect for the late comedy legend.
While Candy’s passing was one notable factor, it was also a creative decision made by co-writer Susannah Grant, who didn’t think that having talking animals was necessary to the story. Although the actor had reportedly recorded some of his dialogue already, Redfeather was dropped entirely from Pocahontas, with raccoon Meeko being the film’s most notable member of the animal kingdom.
Storyboard animator Joe Grant described Redfeather as having “comic potential,” being a bird who “thought he was handsome, a lady’s man.” Once it was decreed that the walking Christmas tradition wouldn’t be speaking, there wasn’t much point in having him remain part of the story at all because, as Grant put it, “having no hands, he couldn’t mime.”
Pocahontas didn’t arrive in cinemas until well over a year after Candy’s death, but it nonetheless holds a bittersweet place in Disney’s history books after he was lined up to bring his signature stylings to a part that never ended up materialising. He may not have made it into the theatrical cut anyway, but it remains a fascinating what-if.
