In an interview to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette actress Mandy Moore who provides the speaking and singing voice to Rapunzel in Tangled explains how excited she was to have been offered the role:
“I remember seeing ‘The Little Mermaid’ in theaters and then obsessively, compulsively watching the video when it came out. And the same with ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast. Those were huge, seminal points in my childhood. So, now this idea that I’m somehow a part of this same family tree, it’s the greatest thing ever. As soon as I heard that Disney was making another animated film and it was the story of Rapunzel, I’m like, ‘I’m in.’ There’s music? ‘Oh, I’m totally in.’ ”

Mandy Moore had to audition for the role and chose not a tune linked to Ariel or Belle but Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me” to supplement the lines she had to read. The new film was conceived as “a melding between the old-school, classic, quintessential great storytelling that we know and love from Disney, coupled with the new technology.”

About her character she says: “I really appreciated and admired her approach toward life and her overall attitude — she wasn’t a victim, she wasn’t judgmental, she wasn’t naive. She was very open-minded, she was very determined. I thought she was very fearless, too, in the face of the unknown. All she’d ever been told about the outside world was that it was filled with scary people who were going to take advantage of her and cut her hair off, but none of that really deterred her from wanting to realize this dream that she had. I recognize some of the physicality, some of the gestures, because obviously they do record you sometimes when you’re in the booth. So that was sort of jarring to see the movie for the first time and go, ‘Oh, wow, there I am. It doesn’t look anything like me, but I definitely could see myself every now and then because I’m quite animated — as a person, anyway, so hopefully they had lots to draw from. I know this will be around long after I’m gone. And just the idea that it can mean to kids, again, what those movies meant to me as a kid is the coolest thing ever.”

Some day soon, the songs “When Will My Life Begin” and “I See the Light” may be looping through the heads and DVD players of girls (and boys).

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette