It’s hard to imagine anyone discussing a follow-up to something called Shrek: The Final Chapter, but star Cameron Diaz insists she’s ready, willing and able to lend her voice as Princess Fiona again.
“It’s easy. It’s not like asking me if I’m going to do Charlie’s Angels 10 years from now,” Diaz says. “It’s a little different fitting into those pants from 10 years ago. But with Shrek, of course we get to go back to whatever they will be 10 years from now. And hopefully we won’t have to wait that long.”
After four films, Diaz definitely feels close to Princess Fiona, who in the latest chapter gets recast as something of a warrior princess, thanks to an It’s a Wonderful Life-inspired plot plopping the titular ogre in a world in which he’d never been born. But for Diaz, Fiona with a battle axe wasn’t much of a stretch.
“Fiona’s always been a warrior. It’s just been a different tone for this film,” she says. “She’s been a warrior of love through all of these films — what she’s worked for, what she’s fought for is the love that she has for herself and the love that she has for Shrek and her family and friends.”
And while the twisting plot gave her a chance to express a different side of her character, there are still some things Diaz herself would like to go back and undo.
“When I first started the movie, when I did my voice, I didn’t know who was playing my parents,” she says. Diaz admits she would’ve gone for something a little more Anglican “if I had known that Fiona’s parents both had British accents — that it was Julie Andrews and John Cleese. It was one of those things like, ‘Wait a second! How come I sound like I’m from California?’”
And while she might not resemble her green-skinned on-screen counterpart in real life that much, that hasn’t saved Diaz from some uncomfortable fan encounters — though it’s usually the parents.
“I’ve had parents come up with their kids and say, ‘Do you know who this is? This is Princess Fiona.’ And the kids are literally in tears,” Diaz says.
“I try to stop them before they tell them because as a kid, you fall in love with characters and you want them to be real. You don’t want to believe there’s a human being behind it. Same way you want to believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. So I’m always like, ‘Please don’t tell them. Don’t. Let Fiona exist as Fiona.’”
