Listen to Chris Farley as he Voices Shrek in an Early Demo Reel
While we all loved Mike Myers voice work for all the Shrek movies, its interesting to note that in 1997 Chris Farley had also done initial demo work for the original Shrek movie.
We wouldn’t be able to enjoy that if not for this video that just surfaced.
Shrek, 1997 Story Reel Development Producer, DreamWorks
If you listen to it carefully, there’s not much difference from the voicework that Myers had done in this scene. The difference lies in how much you can relate to Shrek knowing that the dramatic moments were delivered by Farley.
Then add the fact that the dude had demons and was wrestling with issues of body images then dump that on top of whatever Shrek’s issues were at this particular scene and you could have a golden moment right there.
Or, people will just scoff at this and the film would bomb thereby effectively killing the chances of getting other great Dreamworks movies like How To Train Your Dragon or Kung-Fu Panda.
As much as I loved the final product, I really wonder how different the Shrek franchise would be with Chris Farley at the helm.