Mike Myers says ‘Shrek’ team didn’t tell him Chris Farley originally had the part
Mike Myers was recently feted at the Vulture Festival, and sat for a career-spanning interview with the publication’s comedy journalist Jesse David Fox. The Emmy-winning comic performer discussed “Wayne’s World,” “Austin Powers,” “Saturday Night Live,” his dramatic work, and “Shrek,” sharing some particularly interesting anecdotes about the latter, which has come to be regarded as a classic animated comedy since its 2001 release.
Shrek, the green ogre with a cranky demeanor and a kind heart, was originally meant to be voiced by Chris Farley, who died in 1997 before he finished recording his part. Myers said that when he took the part, he didn’t know that it had originally belonged to his late “SNL” co-star. “They had created this maquette, a little statue made of clay of all the characters, and Shrek looked exactly like Chris Farley. I was at my third meeting, and I go, ‘Guys, was this offered to Chris Farley and then he died?’ Everyone looked at their shoes. I said, ‘No, but seriously, really?’ (Pause.) ‘No.’ ‘Oh, okay.’ I get in the parking lot, and I go, ‘I think this was Farley’s.’ It was! I was right, but they didn’t tell me.”
He also talked about how he found the character’s iconic Scottish accent. He tried a few different voices before landing on the right one. First, working off the assumption that ogres are the blue-collar workers of the fantasy world, he tried a working class Canadian accent like the one he grew up with, but he “didn’t connect to it.” Then he tried a sort of generic fantasy accent like the one he used for the “Dungeons and Dragons”-influenced “SNL” sketch “Lothar of the Hill People.” “Shrek” producer Jeffrey Katzenberg liked that voice, but it still wasn’t connecting for Myers, who has famously exacting standards.
He emotionally connected to Shrek as a (formerly) working-class guy who wasn’t traditionally handsome. “So I always thought, ‘What if I could play a guy who learns to love himself and find himself beautiful? I can really connect to that.’ So if he’s Scottish, I get that. It fits with Farquaad, who’s English, it fits with the Euro-thing,” Myers said, saying that Scottish people are among the working class of Europe. “And the other thing is ogres have tempers, and so do Scottish people. [In a Scottish accent] ‘That’s so great, it’s so great to see you coming over like that, NOW TAKE YOUR F–KING SHOES OFF!’ That flash anger I knew could be inherently comedic. It is what an ogre would be.”
So he went to Katzenberg and asked to take one more crack at a new voice. “He said, ‘It’s gonna cost millions.’ I said, ‘I’m not getting paid more to do this. Let’s do it.’ We did it, and later on, I got a letter from Steven Spielberg [whose company DreamWorks produced ‘Shrek’] saying, ‘Thank you so much for caring.’ It’s framed in my house. He said, ‘You were absolutely right, you were 100 percent more connected to it.’ And Jeffrey came to like it, which is fine. Now here we are.”
Myers confirmed that he is currently working on “Shrek 5,” the long-awaited next entry in the franchise, which is slated for summer 2026.
The “Shrek” franchise is the second-highest-grossing animated film franchise of all time, behind “Despicable Me.” The first “Shrek” film won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.