How Disney brought back Robin Williams' Genie for Once Upon a Studio

The moment Disney fans hear the voice of the late Robin Williams come out of the Genie in Disney's new short film Once Upon a Studio is even more meaningful than people might realize.

Around the three-minute mark, Josh Gad's Olaf from Frozen is spotted humming "Friend Like Me," Williams' classic tune from 1992's Aladdin, while sketching the blue Genie. The larger-than-life, phantasmagorical wish granter then bursts right off of the page in all his hand-drawn animated glory. "I haven't seen a fall like that since Rome," the Genie says over a knocked-over Olaf.

"Josh Gad spoke about Robin — about how the Genie inspired him to be a voice for a Disney character, and he was thrilled that he and Robin were going to be in the same scene together in this film," Eric Goldberg, whose first job at Disney was animating the Genie for Aladdin, says. "Well, the same thing happened on the animation side," he adds, explaining that Hyrum Osmond, who animated Olaf for Frozen, returned to work on the snowman while he worked on the Genie. "It all came home that way."

Goldberg, as well as Once Upon a Time filmmakers Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, spoke with EW about the care and attention that went into this impactful scene with Williams, knowing how beloved both the actor and the character have become over the years. "I grew up with that movie," Correy says of Aladdin. "It is one of my earliest memories. Having worked with Josh Gad over the years on Olaf as a character, knowing that Josh looked up to Robin Williams and was inspired by the Genie, that's very special to me."

The piece of audio used for Williams came from one of the actor's many unused outtakes that he recorded years ago for Aladdin. Abraham sifted through 16 hours of archived recordings to pick the perfect soundbite. "We got the approval of the Robin Williams estate very, very early on," he says. "We told them what we wanted to do and they were like, 'Yep, this is great.' Using original dialogue of his was very important to us."

Goldberg was the other piece of the puzzle. Artists from across the hand-drawn and CGI animation spectrum came to work on Once Upon a Studio to maintain each character's distinct look — and the original Genie animator was one of them. He remembers first coming to work for Disney in the 1980s, after he shut down his London-based commercials company Pizazz Pictures. "It was one of those things where they had been calling me for months, and then they drop the bomb," he recalls.

Disney informed him that directors Ron Clements and John Musker were thinking of making Aladdin the next animated feature film and that maybe Williams was going to be starring in it. So, Goldberg and his wife, Susan, packed their things and moved to California. "I'm so glad that I did because it really was my first Disney gig," he says. "And what a way to start a career at Walt Disney Animation."

Goldberg remembers sitting in on one of Williams' first recordings as the Genie to get inspiration for the character. It didn't go quite as planned. "I was 3 inches from him, and if I started to laugh, I'd kill the recordings," he admits. Still, the animator says he wanted to make the Genie "as broad-ranging as his vocal cords."

Nowadays, Goldberg adds how the Genie is "a guy who just kind of flows out of my fingers. It's not that I don't have to think about it, but it's a comfort fit." After Aladdin, he returned to draw the Genie multiple times over the years for various special occasions — like Once Upon a Studio. "The Genie and I have been friends for many years," he adds, "and to revisit him in this film is always a joy."

Once Upon a Studio is now available to stream on Disney+.

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