Willow Star Voiced Surprising Movie Character in Previous Episode

The new Willow series on Disney+ sees the return of some actors from the original film, including Warwick Davis (Willow), Joanne Whalley (Sorsha), and Kevin Pollak (Rool). There have also been some characters that have returned in a small way, including Val Kilmer's Madmartigen. In last week's episode, Kilmer and Whalley's real-life son, Jack Kilmer, provided Madmartigan's voice in a scene, and that's not the only interesting voice role from the series. In the show's fourth episode, the party finds themselves at Nockmaar, the abandoned castle that served as the home of the evil Queen Bavmorda in the film. Bavmorda was played by Jean Marsh in the original movie, but the character's voice in the new show was actually provided by Ruby Cruz, who plays the daughter of Madmartigan and Sorsha, making her the granddaughter of  Bavmorda. In a recent interview with  The Hollywood Reporter, Cruz was asked if fans should read further into the choice to have her voice the villain. 

"I remember doing my ADR for four and Jon [Kasdan] just being like, 'Hey, so we need this Bavmorda voice. Do you just want to do it?' And I was like, 'Sure,'" Cruz shared with a laugh. "So it was spur of the moment, but it was actually really fun to do. I just listened to a little recording of [Jean Marsh's Bavmorda from the 1988 film] and started playing around with it. I think it's so funny that they actually used it. So I don't know. We'll see what happens." 

How Did Top: Gun Maverick Inspire Willow?

While Kilmer isn't expected to show up in Willow as Madmartigan, he was seen reprising his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky in Top Gun: Maverick earlier this year. Showrunner Jonathan Kasdan recently revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Kilmer's role in the Top Gun sequel served as inspiration for Willow. 

"Not only did it give us food for thought, but my executive producer, Tommy Harper, was the executive producer of Top Gun: Maverick, so he worked with Val then," Kasdan explained of the film. "I had already met Val when we were setting out to do this thing. We've been talking pretty consistently every day of our lives about how to bring Madmartigan back and how that character can continue to live within the Willow universe. And much of the first season asks the question of what happened to Madmartigan. And when there was a real shot at getting him out to Wales during our first season, we had a very specific moment when that question was going to be answered. But when it became clear that we weren't going to get him out there because of the restrictions that Covid was putting on all of us, we simply pushed the question a little further down the road and continued to build it out in ways that we thought were tantalizing and fun."

The first seven episodes of Willow are now streaming on Disney+.