E! Online: OUAT Is Doing Frozen! Bosses Spill on "Misunderstood" Elsa

[MatthewPaul]

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Get out your winter coats, because Once Upon a Time is officially getting chilly!
We know you’re all tired of Frozen-related puns, but don’t put them away just yet. Last night’s season finale was a whirlwind of time-travel-y goodness in which a lot of things went down, but the moment that really had people talking was the reveal at the end that Emma and Hook had accidentally brought a little something extra back from the Enchanted Forest, and that little something turned out to be a certain snow queen with whom most of the world has recently fallen in love.
That’s right, after months of us wishing and hoping, Queen Elsa of Arendelle has come to Storybrooke, and she is probably not alone! We chatted with executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz about the twist no one (or everyone?) saw coming, and what we might expect from season four of the magical ABC drama.

Were there any challenges securing Frozen because it’s such a new Disney film?
Adam Horwitz: Well, you know it’s funny. Eddy and I saw the movie when it came out last year and we loved it. It was our favorite movie of the year and when we saw it we thought, ‘Wow, this really feels like something that we would love to do.’
Edward Kitsis: These were toys that we wanted to play with right away.
AH: It felt like it was in the wheelhouse of what we wanted for the show and we were very excited about it, and we pitched the idea to the studio network and we were very fortunate that they gave us the go-ahead.
EK: It’s funny because people will immediately assume that oh we got a call from Disney and they told us, ‘You need to use our new property.” But it was actually the reverse. It’s not easy to get property from franchises and this was out of really our love for the story.
AH: So there’s a lot of trust all around that we need to live up to, we know that this is a beloved characters and a beloved movie. My five-year-old daughter would be the first one to raise the pitchfork. So you know we’re very excited and humbled by the opportunity.

Elsa was locked away in Rumple’s dark chamber of horrors, does this mean that our Ice Queen is next year’s new villain?
AH: I would say with Elsa that one of the great things about that character and that we loved so much is that she was misunderstood and that is something that we definitely want to carry over into our interpretation.
How true are you going to stay to Elsa’s character in the movie? Could we see that classic Once Upon a Time twist with her as well?
AH: Well, it’s funny, we’re not going to redo the movie, because we just don’t feel like it’s in anyone’s interest for us to redo it. But what we are going to do, we’re not ready to tell you. But what we can say is we’re very aware of what we think makes this character from Frozen so special and we want to honor that and make sure that what we do is in the universe of everyone fell in love with this past year.
Does this mean that we could be traveling to Arendelle?
EK: I would be disappointed if we didn’t!

And of course you can’t have Elsa without Anna. Will this princess be arriving as well?
EK: Of course! I think who is in the picture and who we meet this year is…
AH: Something that we will probably start to reveal over the summer. But I would be disappointed if all we saw was Elsa.
We came up with a dream cast for Elsa and Anna in our Frozen dream cast. Is there any one that you’re maybe already considering?
AH: To be perfectly honest we haven’t even begun starting casting, there are a lot of amazing people out there and we have to find them,
EK: Yeah to be honest, once we wrapped and we cut this is the only three week of freedom that we’ve had. Adam and I have done these calls off the grid and now we’re men with crazy beards.
Would you like us to get back in touch with Kristen Bell to play Anna?
AH: Well Kristen Bell was Anna. We saw the interview you guys did with her and we’re going to start our process. [In regards to] Kristen Bell, there’s no bigger fans than us, whether it be Frozen or Veronica Mars.
EK: But for us, personally, right now we just need to take a beat and think about what we want to do in that but thank you so much for getting that started.

Switching gears to Maid Marion. This poor girl has no idea what type of trouble she just caused, what does her arrival mean for Regina next year?
EK: I would say, that for us, we have built 66 episodes of growth for Regina and that this is a very big setback. So for us, the question that we want to ask the audience is, How does she handle is? And that really is a very uncomfortable situation for everyone involved and it’s very complicated. She’s done a lot of growing and this is hard so for us, what’s interesting is to see how Regina responds. And how Emma responds because Emma will feel, like her mom, a certain amount of guilt.
AH: This is a different Regina then the Regina we met in the pilot and we want to honor that growth but now she’s got to fight many different instinct within her to see how she’s going to handle this new development.
EK: I think on this show we’ve learned that the greatest villain is your own weaknesses.
Emma has come such a long way, emotionally, this year. What were your goals for her this year?
EK: Well, for us when we knew that we were doing the wicked witch, we knew that Emma’s arc was going to be, ‘There’s no place like home.’ So we started the year saying to her mom in Neverland, I feel like an orphan and it ends with her calling them Mom and Dad for the first time and not in a dire, I-think-I’m-going-to-die situation. We love the idea that we aired episode 66 last night and it took 66 episodes for Emma to realize that Storybrooke is her home and embrace who she really is.

What were your goals for Snow this season?
EK: I think for Snow we wanted to tell a much more emotional and personal story, which is you know, for two seasons, it was kind of, you know, the first season she was in the dark because she was cursed and then season two, she just naturally, because she’s such a hopeful spirit, assumed that now that the curse is broken and Emma knows who we are, we have our daughter again, and this year, what we wanted to do was say well actually that’s not true, she doesn’t look at you like a mom, and it made her kind of question what she missed in life and what she wanted and where her happy ending was and how she continued to try and provide a hopeful influence on Emma. So her journey this year with Emma personally was to get Emma to look at her like a mom.
And how great was that moment when Snow finally got her wish?! Even aside from the exciting Frozen twist at the end, that finale was packed with beautiful moments, from Emma somewhat embracing her feelings for Hook and the marriage of Rumple and Belle! Interested in buying a wedding present?
“They’ll be registering for eye of newt and a dragon’s heart,” Kitsis told us with a laugh.
Great! Now… does anyone know how to get to Diagon Alley?!

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