What we learned from Wish: Walt Disney liked to dress up his farm animals
Disney Animation’s new film Wish is meant as a centennial celebration of the studio’s extensive catalog. The original fairy tale follows defiant protagonist Asha (voiced by Ariana DeBose) and her little goat Valentino (voiced by Alan Tudyk) in their quest against the arrogant King Magnifico (Chris Pine), and it includes an array of visual and musical references to past Disney classics. But Valentino, who whimsically wears pajamas, is a nod to a historical note about the studio’s founder, Walt Disney himself.
“[Valentino] wears pajamas because that makes him really fun and specific, but there are also two other reasons,” Wish producer Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster-Jones told Polygon at a pre-release junket. “One is because we’ve been researching Walt Disney’s childhood, and he would dress up his farm animals back in Marceline, Missouri. So that’s a little nod to that.”
In a general Q&A with reporters at the same event, Wish co-director Chris Buck touched on the same idea by interviewing an imagined Disney. “Where did the idea come from for you to dress up your farm animals?” Buck asked. “Because he did that, and that’s where I think a lot of the animals in clothes come from in the Disney movies.”
Valentino isn’t the only reference to Walt Disney’s childhood. As Asha sings the film’s central number, “This Wish,” which summons a living star down from the heavens, she visits the wishing tree she used to sit in with her father. “One of the things I really like — that is also a direct inspiration from Walt,” Lancaster-Jones said. “This wish sequence, we have the wishing tree that is inspired by his dreaming tree in Marceline, Missouri.”
The second reason for Valentino’s attire, Lancaster-Jones explained, is because Wish co-writer
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