Pocahontas (1995 film) character flowered into the idea of a grandmotherly spiritual adviser to Pocahontas. Because of Katzenberg's opposition to having Grandmother Willow in the story, Joe Grant assisted fellow veteran story artist Burny Mattinson with coming up tree puns such as "My bark is worse than my bite", "The roots of all problems", and "They're barking up the wrong tree." Mattinson reluctantly added them to his pitch for the next morning, and during the story meeting, he exclaimed, "Everybody loved it! All of a sudden: 'Oh, I want her in!' 'Let's build her part bigger!'" In September 1992, Disney began casting actors
Tiana (Disney) expectations were not particularly high. She explained, "I wasn't planning on being a princess. I thought I'd be like a weeping willow or something." To prepare herself for her audition, Rose made sure that she "had a voice ready." Rose auditioned for the role of Tiana a total of three times. Both "thrilled" and "ecstatic" by the fact that she would be voicing Disney's first African American princess, Rose, a longtime fan of Disney who had always wanted to voice a Disney character, was "surprised by some of the things that the community took issue with." When the film was