Anika Noni Rose Frog Princess
Tony Award winning actor wins title role in Disney animated movie
Apr 23, 2007
(Source: www.eonline.com)
Call it revenge, sweet revenge. Anika Noni Rose, the award-winning Broadway actor who was the underappreciated third member of Dreamgirls, has won the role of Maddy in the Mouse House's upcoming animated movie, The Frog Princess.
Rose, 34, vaulted past a whole slew of big-name contenders, including Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, and Tyra Banks (???) to land the coveted role of Maddy, the 19-year-old heroine of the Disney animated flick.
According to reports, Rose was somewhere in New York City's Times Square when she got the word that she had won the role. She immediately high-tailed it to Disney's offices nearby, where executives were waiting for her with champagne.
Rose is best known to moviegoers as Lorrell Robinson, the 3rd Dream in the award-winning DreamWorks/Paramount movie Dreamgirls, behind Hudson and Knowles. Before that, she won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, honouring her work in the Broadway show Caroline, or Change. She also made waves appearing in the theatrical adaptation of Footloose, and suffered through second-string status in 2003's From Justin to Kelly (a movie Rose is probably hoping she can soon remove from her resumé).
Rose's getting the role of Maddy is huge by any stretch of the imagination: The Frog Princess is not only Disney's first full-length cel animated feature film since shutting down the division in 2005, but it is also the Mouse House's first black princess.
Rose will gain a certain immortality in another way. Quite often, animators will incorporate elements of the actor's look into the animated character, so expect Maddy to look somewhat like Rose.
The movie is being directed by the award-winning tag-team of Disney animated movies, Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin). Randy Newman (Cars, Toy Story) is composing the music for the flick.
In other news, Walt Disney Feature Animation is now contemplating a name change for both Rose's character and the movie itself. Maddy's new handle is still up in the air; The Frog Princess is rumoured to be renamed The Princess and the Frog. The flick's IMDb page claims that the movie's script will be based on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
Whether it's called The Frog Princess or The Princess and the Frog, the Mouse House is gunning for a 2009 theatrical release for this movie.
Fun Fact: You can check out the full proposed cast list for The Frog Princess and the Frog (heh-heh-heh) by clicking here. This came out last December.
