Mother Gothel always about ... who’s best for the part". Film critic James Berardinelli of "ReelViews "observed that this decision echoed "Disney's approach during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when big name stars where often bypassed in favor of lesser known talents." An additional asset was that the actor be able to perform well both independently and collaboratively. Mother Gothel is voiced by American actress and singer Donna Murphy, a Tony Award-winning Broadway actress who was informed about the casting call for "Tangled "by her agent. Having never voiced an animated character before, the actress decided to audition for the role
Mother Knows Best (song) work" while "Frollo is a much more sophisticated villain, but easier to understand ... than Mother Gothel", whose relationship with Rapunzel is more manipulative than the Frollo-Quasimodo dynamic. While writing "Mother Knows Best", Menken was briefly concerned that "there [would] be a rash of children trying to kill their parents after they’ve seen the movie." According to directors Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, one of the song's lines, "getting kind of chubby", was lifted from an interview the directors had held with several female Disney employees, in which they asked them to describe their relationships with their mothers. Menken was