“ Mel, at the time, was working on Braveheart, so he wasn’t able to make it to any of the premieres,” Bedard says.
“And I crossed paths with Linda Hunt as she was going into a session and I was coming out.”īut she and Gibson never saw each other in the recording booth or even outside on the red carpet when the movie premiered. “I did one voiceover session with Russell, because he wanted to have someone to banter with,” Bedard says. In fact, the majority of Bedard’s voiceover sessions were solo over the course of the two-and-a-half year recording process. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)Įven as Bedard and Gibson’s cartoon selves acted out this grand romance, the two were never physically in the same place at the same time. HOLLYWOOD, CA - JUNE 11: Irene Bedard attends the premiere of "Pocahontas" on Jat the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, California. To celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary, Bedard revealed four other things you probably never knew about Pocahontas, from a missing mother to a meeting that has yet to happen. “To see what story it was showing, that both sides were looking at each other in this way of, ‘You’re less than.’ The song really shines a light on that, so ultimately it adds to the story.” “It was about how all these different characters think of each other as savages in a way,” she recalls adding that she’s since made peace with Pocahontas’s most controversial song. These racial experiences leave deep emotional and psychological scars on young children.”īedard says that she wrestled with the legacy of the word “savages” in a one-woman play she wrote years ago. “Despite any possibly well meaning but fundamentally misguided purposes of the Disney screenwriter who wrote the song,” he said, “the fact is that Indian children come home in tears - as they have for centuries - when school children or playmates sing ‘Savages, Savages’ to them. And in his 1996 essay, The Pocahontas Paradox, indigenous studies professor Cornel Pewewardy explained why he felt the the song was out of place in an animated film aimed at children. Washington Post film critic Rita Kempley dismissed ‘Savages’ as “heavy-handed” in her negative review. That us versus them rhetoric - marked by a refusal to see the shared humanity between different races and cultures - echoes on the streets of present-day America, as millions of protestors march to denounce police violence and proclaim that Black lives matter. “They’re not like you and me, which means they must be evil,” sings Ratcliffe, while Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan (Russell Means), declares: “The paleface is a demon, the only thing they feel at all is greed.”
As both groups ready to fight, they raise their voices in separate battle cries. The climactic song, ‘Savages’, is performed while the Powhatan tribe prepares to defend themselves against the money-minded English settlers led by John Ratcliffe (David Ogden Stiers). Read more: Everything coming to Disney+ in JuneĪ quarter-century later, though, there’s another track from Pocahontas that eclipses ‘ Colours of the Wind’, at least in terms of timeliness. It’s no wonder that it won the Academy Award.” (Watch our video interview above.)
“And Judy just gives a powerhouse of a performance. It’s still amazing to look at those lyrics, which put so much into one song in such a succinct and beautiful way,” Irene Bedard, the voice of Native American peacemaker Pocahontas, tells Yahoo Entertainment. ‘ Colours of the Wind’ went on to win the hat trick at the Golden Globes, Grammys and Oscars, and has since been covered by artists ranging from Ashanti to Brian Wilson.
Written by regular Disney composer, Alan Menken, and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, the song was performed onscreen by Broadway star Judy Kuhn, and recorded by Vanessa Williams in a track that cracked the upper echelons of the Billboard Hot 100. When Walt Disney’s Pocahontas premiered in cinemas 25 years ago, the movie’s breakout anthem, ‘ Colours of the Wind’, quickly became the ‘ Let It Go’ of its day.