John Lithgow — Shrek’s Lord Farquaad — Thought to Movie Was Going to Be a ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon, Not a Big Deal’

John Lithgow’s role as Lord Farquaad in Shrek might be iconic now, but he didn’t expect it to be when he first joined the project. 

In a video posted March 13, Variety had Lithgow read lines from some of his roles and test if he remembered which movies they were from. The first —  “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" — was instantly recognizable to both the 79-year-old star and legions of Shrek fanatics as a line from Lord Farquaad.

But the Conclave star revealed that he never really thought the movie would become the sensation it now is. “I thought it was like a Saturday morning cartoon or something. Not a big deal,” he said.

When he joined the movie, he said, “I read my dialogue. They showed me a maquette of this little character, Lord Farquaad. And they showed me a lot of storyboards, animated storyboards. And I thought, well, this looks like fun.” The writers “pitched” him on what made the character funny, and he signed on.

But the path to the movie’s 2001 release ended up being a lot longer than he expected. “The curious thing was that was, like, four years before we ever saw Shrek,” he said. “And they would bring me back in once every eight months or so to record some new material. And it was like, ‘Oh, I gotta do this Shrek thing again? What is this?’ ”

Lithgow noted that Chris Farley was originally supposed to voice Shrek, but he died in 1997. The studio brought in Mike Myers instead. “Mike Myers recorded the whole thing. Then they decided he should use his Scottish accent from his great SNL sketches,” Lithgow remembered. “So there are all sorts of things that prolonged the process.” 

In addition to Lithgow and Myers, Shrek starred Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy. Based on the 1990 children’s book Shrek!, the movie has had three direct sequels: 2004’s Shrek 2, 2007’s Shrek the Third and 2010’s Shrek Forever After. Shrek 5 is set to be released in 2026 and will also feature Zendaya. The films have also been spun off into two movies starring the character Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas).

Lithgow only appeared in the first movie, but he told PEOPLE in October 2024 that he would "say yes in a minute" if asked to return for Shrek 5. The only problem is, at the end of the first film, he’s eaten by a dragon. "It turns out it's impossible to recover from being eaten by a dragon," he said.

Vicky Jenson, one of Shrek’s two directors, told PEOPLE in November 2024 that, not unlike Lithgow, the movie’s success was a “big surprise” to her. “It just felt very small because it was a tight team,” she said. “We felt like we were on our own for a lot of the time.” 

“It really wasn't until a few sequences started coming back in lighting, and we were watching full screenings, [that we] were going, ‘Wow, this. This is different,’ “ she explained. “This could either work really well or not at all.” It was when the movie was well-received at the Cannes Film Festival that she realized they might have a hit on their hands.