The easy role that wore John Goodman out: “I don’t want to sound whiny”
If John Goodman isn’t busy collaborating with the Coen brothers or getting tormented by tiny people (his turn in The Borrowers showed his propensity for slapstick), you can probably find him voicing an animated character.
Of course, he famously voiced Sully in Monsters Inc, but he has also lent his voice to Santa Claus in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, Layton in The Bee Movie, and more recently, he even assumed the role of Papa Smurf in 2025’s Smurfs. You might see these as easy roles, perhaps even a cop-out – an actor doesn’t even have to get all dressed up for work since no one is going to see them.
But that would be an incredibly naive view of voice acting, which Goodman finds just as challenging as acting on screen, because there’s a lot that goes into the process of bringing an animated character’s voice to life. It can actually be a lot more physical than people realise.
When Goodman took on the role of Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove – the Disney movie that somehow managed to get Eartha Kitt down to play one of the main characters – he admitted that it was a lot more challenging than he thought it was going to be, and by this point, he already had a few voice roles under his belt, but none were as high-budget as this Disney flick, which soon became a classic.
“It wore me out. I don’t want to sound whiny, it’s not like laying [a] brick or anything. But just sustaining energy. I put my whole body into it when I do animation, and it gets a little tiring after a while,” Goodman told Vulture.
Goodman found the whole ordeal difficult to keep up with, and he soon started to have regrets. “Plus, I think I was still smoking, so that couldn’t have helped. They tape you, so they know what kind of faces I’m pulling. That’s pretty smart, because they can draw your dialogue around it,” he added.
Of course, he persevered, and his role as the village leader was well-loved by audiences, his comedic background perfectly serving his capabilities as a voice actor. The Emperor’s New Groove grossed $169.7million and remains a firm favourite for many, although it was a long and arduous process getting the film onto the big screen. It was set to be called Kingdom of the Sun, but extensive changes were made over the course of production, which lasted more than five years.
Goodman clearly wasn’t totally put off shooting voice roles, though, because he soon went on to lend himself to many more – perhaps this was his calling, after all, and evidently, a tough role can sometimes be the most rewarding, and Goodman can’t seem to get enough of voicing animated characters, routinely going back for more.
He even reprised his role as Pacha in Kronk’s New Groove, a direct-to-DVD sequel that was panned by critics – you can’t always strike gold, and this was a big swing and a miss.
