When I interviewed Once Upon a Time writers/executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz at WonderCon in April 2014 about the rumor that Frozen was going to be introduced to Once Upon a Time‘s fourth season, they said it was just that: a rumor. “We were asked a question, ‘Do we like Frozen?’ and we said, ‘Oh my god, we love Frozen. That would be awesome,’ and somehow, that has become a story. I mean, I also like Darth Vader but he’s not coming on. But you know, you never say never,” replied Kitsis.
Of course, now we know that characters from Frozen will indeed play important roles in Once Upon a Time‘s fourth season and that Kitsis and Horowitz were just trying to downplay the rumors in order to make the season three finale come as a surprise to fans of the series.
“We’re fans of Frozen, we’re fans of Brave, we’re fans of a million Disney properties and fairy tales and stories that we feel would be great parts of this show. But what we’re doing right now this season is we’re really focusing on the characters you’ve seen and the ones we’ve introduced. And where we might go in the future is stuff that we’re hoping to mull over and hopefully surprise people,” said Horowitz.
At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Horowitz and Kitsis were able to actually talk about the introduction of the Frozen characters to the Storybrooke world and what else viewers can expect from the popular ABC series.
Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz Once Upon a Time Interview
At WonderCon, you said you weren’t sure about introducing Frozen and now we know it will be a part of season four…
Edward Kitsis: “Well, I will say that at that point, we probably didn’t know if we would get a yes. So…”
Adam Horowitz: “It was not a lie. It was a, ‘We’re trying to do it, but if we could do it…'”
Edward Kitsis: “Well, like anything, you have to give it more thought than, ‘Let’s do it,’ you know? We saw Frozen, we were inspired, the room talked about it. We said, ‘Wow, that would be a good fit for our show.’ ‘Would it be a good fit for our show?’ We decided it was, and then the next thing is going to ask Disney, ‘Can we do Frozen?'”
And did they immediately say yes?
Adam Horowitz: “They did. It was actually very quick. We got a response that said yes. We then went through a process of pitching what we were going to do to various people within the corporation and they’ve been supportive and we take the responsibility very seriously. We’re really trying to do justice to those characters that everybody loves.”
You’ve dabbled a little bit outside the world of traditional fairy tale characters. Could you realistically imagine knocking on Disney’s door and asking them about Star Wars characters?
Adam Horowitz: “We can say that now that Chewbacca will remain a stuffed animal on my couch, not on my show.”
Edward Kitsis: “Yeah. I could say that, look, when people ask us what’s our favorite fairy tale we say Star Wars. But I don’t know if our show can handle Boba Fett and Jawas. But Frozen fit very nicely into our show so thematically that’s why we chose to do it.”
Did the fact that the non-fairy tale references might not have worked so well cause you to pull away from that?
Edward Kitsis: “Well, no one got the Franz Kafka reference from season one or the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Adam Horowitz: “Yeah, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We dabble in different areas and we like to touch on them. We, as writers, try to find what works. Some things work better than others.”
Edward Kitsis: “I think our show started with fairy tales and that seems to be what our audience loves.”
Adam Horowitz: “But you know when we started the show, back even with the pilot, it was always meant to expand beyond just the most traditional fairy tales. It was never meant to be just the Snow White story. In the pilot, when the book flips open you see The Wizard of Oz in there. You see Peter Pan. We always wanted to go to those worlds and we’re always excited to find worlds to visit.”
Edward Kitsis: “That’s why when the book flipped it showed so many different stories so that we knew that once we did all these things, people would be like, ‘They never set that up!’ And we could be, ‘Yes, we did! Right here!'”
We saw that Elsa and Gold have some history. Are there any other characters that we know will have some history with Elsa and Anna?
Edward Kitsis: “Well, I think that would be part of… What was fun for us was, you know, we are not trying to do the sequel to Frozen. We are bringing Anna and Elsa into the Once universe so for us, you have a character like Anna who never gives up no matter what someone tells her, who always sees the good in people. What happens when she meets Rumpelstiltskin who is the devil himself? And that was kind of the things that started to excite us. What happens when those two get together?”
What did Georgina Haig bring to the character of Elsa?
Edward Kitsis: “We were fans of hers from Fringe and we actually met her once in Vancouver. She’s friends with Colin [O’Donoghue]. When we were doing this we were like, ‘Georgina is perfect for Elsa,’ and she was on her honeymoon camping on some island in Australia I’ve never heard of. We literally got her to kind of do the audition on her honeymoon and we were like, ‘That’s it.'”
Adam Horowitz: “‘There she is.'”
Edward Kitsis: “For us what we loved was her strength and her intelligence. She’s able to really have the empowerment of Elsa but also that internal logic where Elsa was always thinking of everything, the way her parents always said to her, ‘Don’t do this.’ What we love is the intelligence of her and she’s very queenly.”
– Once Upon a Time Comic Con Photo Gallery
