Here’s some fowl news: Disney’s beloved Moana franchise is making the leap from animation to live action next year, but Alan Tudyk won’t be coming along for the ride. The actor and Mouse House voiceover star provided the clucks and crows for the title character’s trusty rooster sidekick Heihei in the Oscar-nominated 2016 original and its box-office-record-breaking 2024 sequel. But the feathery baton will pass to another performer in the live-action Moana, due in theaters on July 10, 2026.
“Heihei will be played by someone else,” Tudyk confirms to Gold Derby during a conversation about his Emmy-nominated voiceover role in the Disney+ series Andor. The actor adds that the “someone else” will be a female performer whose casting has yet to be revealed. “Everybody calls Heihei a chicken, even though he’s a rooster,” Tudyk jokes. “So it’s about time they got an actress to put a little more ‘chick’ in the chicken.”
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The live-action Moana is directed by Thomas Kail, frequent collaborator of Oscar-nominated Moana songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is back onboard the franchise after sitting out Moana 2. Dwayne Johnson is also reprising his role as that demigod with the good hair, Maui, while newcomer Catherine Laga’aia is playing the seafaring wayfinder Moana — a character originated by Auliʻi Cravalho.
Tudyk and Dwayne Johnson reprised their respective roles as Heihei and Maui in Moana 2Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Tudyk makes it clear that there are no hard feelings about not being asked back as Heihei, noting that Disney generally likes to preserve a church and state-style divide between its animated films and their live-action counterparts. “I do Disney animation,” he says about his prolific presence across the studio’s many animated favorites ranging from Big Hero 6 and Frozen to Wreck-It Ralph and Zootopia. “They keep putting me in ’em, so I’ll keep doing ’em!”
The one exception to Disney’s “no live action” rule for Tudyk was Guy Ritchie‘s 2019 redo of Aladdin, where he was called it at the last minute to provide the voice of Jafar’s parrot, Iago, a character memorably voiced by the late Gilbert Gottfried in the 1992 cartoon. “They called me and said, ‘We thought we were going to use a real parrot, but the real parrot isn’t playing along,'” Tudyk remembers with a laugh. “I came in and gave them some parrot sounds.”
While Tudyk’s Disney animation work is mainly recording booth-based, his Star Wars duties as reformed Imperial droid K-2SO have required him to don a motion-capture suit for the character’s appearances in Rogue One and Andor. And the actor jokes that one silver lining about not being asked back for the live action Moana is avoiding having to bring Heihei kicking and clawing into the mo-cap era.
Tudyk and his Star Wars alter ego K-2SO on the Rogue One set in 2016Jonathan Olley/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Lucasfilm Ltd./Courtesy Everett Collection
“I bet the new Heihei has to do [mo-cap],” says Tudyk, who had another recent mo-cap role in James Gunn‘s Superman as one of the Fortress of Solitude robots. “I did motion-capture for Superman and Krypto was played by a young girl [Murphy Reed] who was jumping around on her knees in a mo-cap suit. I kept thinking, ‘I fear for your knees!'”
“So I’m a no to doing motion-capture for animals,” Tudyk adds about how far he’ll go for beloved Disney cartoon characters like Heihei. “That’s a tough one.”
Look for our full interview with Alan Tudyk coming soon.
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