Supporting characters from the animated movie “Zootopia” will be in the spotlight in Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s new 4D show “Zootopia: Better Zoogather.”
Benjamin Clawhauser, a cheetah who works a desk job at the Zootopia Police Department, is represented by large animatronics in the attraction and a two-dimensional appearance on a large screen in the park’s Tree of Life Theater.
Clawhauser is voiced by actor Nate Torrence, who visited Walt Disney World this week to preview the show ahead of its Friday release.
In the attraction’s storyline, Clawhauser takes time off from the ZPD to attend a concert of singing gazelles as part of the Zoo Day celebration.
First look: How the new ‘Zootopia’ show fits into Animal Kingdom
Danny Handke, senior creative director at Walt Disney Imagineering, said: “He wants to be chosen to be on stage as a very important Zootopian, VIZ, and then he just ruins everything. It just felt true to the character.”
“Clawhauser was like the eyes of the audience for us,” Handke said.
Torrence, whose credits include episodes of “St. Denis Medical,” “Superstore,” “Supernatural” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” said he was surprised by the amount of freedom Disney gave him when voicing the characters. Some of his facial expressions and physical features are incorporated into Clawhauser’s appearance.
“After watching Clawhauser, I was surprised at how much I used my hands,” Torrence said.
In theme park shows, “there were certain times when they would come in and be like, ‘I just want to hear how you say it and see you move around,'” he said. This gave Imagineering ideas for how animatronics could react to on-screen action and watery 4D effects.
The movie version and the Animal Kingdom version of Clawhauser used different acting techniques.
“I was very vocally conscious and I would say we took a more live stage approach” to the Tree of Life show, as the animatronic puppets speak to a live audience, he said.
“Clawhauser is the ambassador of this attraction,” said Jared Busch, chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios. “In this (attraction) you can see him with a glowing necklace. You can see that in Zootopia 2 as well.”
The “Zootopia” sequel will be released in theaters on November 26th.
“Nate, the actor, and Clawhauser are the same person. There’s no way to separate them,” Busch said.
“Of all the actors, Nate has been on Zootopia the longest,” he said. “We do something called a table read, where we bring in a bunch of people who aren’t involved in the movie and have them read the book before we cast them. In the original reading, he was Clawhauser, so we listened to him and as a result he became Clawhauser forever.”
The number of animatronics in Orlando theme parks is increasing, making them more realistic.
And now he’s an animatronic.
“I flew my whole family out to see it this weekend, so my mom, dad, brothers and sisters are all waiting in the van to come see this,” Torrence said. “I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that I can’t afford to miss.”
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