Shrek Would Have Been Very Different Had It Been Voiced by This Late Comedy Icon
I had no idea that he was the original actor cast in the role of Shrek!
Today, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Mike Myers playing the voice of everyone's favorite Ogre, DreamWorks' Shrek. You can't even read the words "That'll do, Donkey. That'll do." without hearing Myers' distinctively gruff Scottish accent voice in your head.
But as some of you may know, before Myers came to be the mean, green, farting machine we all know and love, another comedy great and Saturday Night Live alum was set to voice the role of the title character: Chris Farley.
In 1997, Chris Farley had finished an estimated 80-90% of his recordings before passing away unexpectedly later that year of a drug overdose. He had gotten so far along, in fact, that DreamWorks considered hiring an impersonator, before deciding to hire Mike Myers. As far as I know, there had been no released audio of Farley's work on the film, until now.
Paired with the storyboard drawings and Eddie Murphy's Donkey, the released scene is fairly relevant to the internal struggle Chris Farley went through in his final years. You can hear how deeply connected he is to Shrek's feeling of being misunderstood and simply looking for love and acceptance for who he was.
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