Lilo & Stitch Director Explains How He Ended Up Voicing Loveable Alien
Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders explains how he came to voice Stitch in the classic Disney film. Sanders directed the film, which released in 2002, alongside Dean DeBlois. Lilo & Stitch was immensely successful, going on to receive its own Disney Channel TV show (Lilo & Stitch: The Series) and two sequels (Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch and Leroy & Stitch). Now, twenty years later, a live-action adaptation of the animated film is in development.
The vocal cast behind Lilo & Stitch includes Tia Carrere as Lilo’s older sister Nani, Kevin McDonald as Pleakley, and David Ogden Stiers as Jumba. Daveigh Chase, who was twelve years old at the time Lilo & Stitch was released, voices Lilo. Despite her young age, Chase had already been a working actor by the time she was cast in the film.
Related: Why Disney Cut Lilo & Stitch’s Darkest Scene
Rather than casting another seasoned actor in the role of Stitch, however, Sanders did the voice himself, as he explains in a recent interview with NYT. According to the director, he did not want to go with a “real actor like Danny DeVito,” as he worried Disney would slam him for casting a big name in a role with so little actual dialogue. Producer Clark Spencer, who is now the president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, says it's funny Sanders remembers it that way, since he “can’t imagine anyone but Chris’s voice for Stitch.” Check out the director's full quote below:
We didn’t want to go to a real actor like Danny DeVito, and then have the studio coming to us saying, ‘Why did you hire someone who’s a known entity, but they only say like 15 words?’
Even if a DeVito-like figure would have been a more conventional choice for a major film, going with Sanders worked out well for
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