Pokémon’s Ash Ketchum never heard those Leonardo DiCaprio rumors but isn’t surprised
In our post-Shrek animation landscape, celebrity casting is as standard as a dance party curtain call in which Donkey and the Gingerbread Man do the Cabbage Patch to "It's Tricky." Today, we wonder why Chris Pratt is playing Mario and Garfield, landing on the assumption that it must make some business sense because kids don't care that the star of The Tomorrow War is heading to the Mushroom Kingdom. It certainly doesn't improve the movie to hire inexperienced voice actors. Alas, making a good movie isn't always the highest priority.
Nevertheless, this thinking has been debated for decades. For example, in 1998, when producer Norman Grossfeld was selling Pokémon: The First Movie, one studio suggested Leonardo DiCaprio for Ash Ketchum. By then, voice actor Veronica Taylor had won young audiences over with her plucky Ash Ketchum. However, that didn't stop one distributor from suggesting Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh off Titanic, for the role. Thankfully, in a pre-Shrek world, one could argue that kids know and care about what Ash sounds like. "
Speaking with Vulture, Taylor says she "never heard" these DiCaprio rumors before and has a sober dismissal of the suggestion ("That can't possibly be true"). Still, Taylor is aware of the precarity of her position. If the money is there, no amount of goodwill, hard work, or logic will protect her from celebrities taking her job. She knows that won't make a good movie, though.
"We are all so easily replaced for the money if you think this is going to sell tickets, but no child is paying for the star name," Taylor said. "They're paying for the emotion and the voice that they know and for the character to come alive. Nothing against Leonardo DiCaprio, but having already played Ash for a year, I was better suited to fill the sneakers than he would have been jumping in."
DiCaprio was the biggest star in the world when Pokémon was in production. In the years since, he has grown into one of his generation's most respected and renowned actors, only eliciting negative criticism when someone investigates the age of his current girlfriend. Yet Taylor knows that he didn't have the chops for Ketchum. The process likely "would have taken a lot longer," and the production "didn't pay very much." More importantly, DiCaprio "has a wonderful voice" but doesn't quite have "Ash's scrappy, 'let's get to it' charm."