Steve Martin was nearly the voice behind Goofy in A Goofy Movie.

It’s hard to imagine the beloved blockbuster disappointment A Goofy Movie without the distinct voice Disney fans have associated with him since Pinto Colvig originated the character in 1932. But according to Disney Plus’ Not Just a Goof, a documentary that dives into the making of the 1995 cult classic for its 30th anniversary, there was a moment where it looked like Goofy wouldn’t be able to keep his iconic Hyuck!s and Gawrsh!s for the movie.

According to A Goofy Movie director Kevin Lima, Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg wasn’t totally sold on the cartoony Goofy voice. So he offered an alternative.

“He had this… great idea,” Lima recounts, dripping sarcasm. “What if… Steve Martin were Goofy? Wouldn’t that be fabulous? Imagine how you could sell that!”

Katzenberg didn’t even want Martin to attempt the classic Goofy voice, Lima says — he just wanted Martin to do his own voice.

Lima and the other filmmakers knew this was, quite frankly, a terrible idea. But in order to gently guide Katzenberg to that conclusion, Lima approached longtime Goofy voice actor Bill Farmer and Jason Marsden (who voiced Goofy’s son Max) and suggested a plan. Lima asked Farmer to just record some scenes in his regular voice.

“And Bill has a complete meltdown,” Lima says.

“I went home and I didn’t get much sleep,” Farmer confesses in the movie. “’Cause I was worried… Don’t they wanna hear Goofy when they hear A Goofy Movie?”

Still, Farmer went through with it, recording a few scenes in his normal voice. The team showed the footage to Katzenberg, with Lima claiming that he personally wasn’t behind the idea. After watching the scenes, Katzenberg thankfully also agreed that the straightforward character voice did not work for Goofy, and Farmer was able to return to the usual Goofy characterization for the movie.

“This is how the whim of a studio executive can change a movie in a moment if you don’t fight back against a bad idea,” says Lima.

While the filmmakers didn’t ultimately use Farmer’s regular voice, though, head of story Brian Pimental says those recording sessions added dimensionality to the character. In the Goof Troop television show and other Goofy shorts, Goofy is cartoonish and silly. But A Goofy Movie shows more of his emotional range, as a sometimes struggling, sometimes angry, or loving, or emotionally wounded father. Now that the filmmakers knew what Farmer could do, Lima said, they could guide him to a subtler and more powerful performance.

Given Goofy’s decades-long role as Disney’s resident clown, it might have seemed strange on paper to see Goofy having a tense heart-to-heart with Max, where he and his son awkwardly stumble over words. Especially after a scene where Goofy accidentally catches Bigfoot, screams his head off, and scrambles away backward while holding up his camera to record the cryptid. But that contrast is what makes A Goofy Movie so special. All respect to Steve Martin, but without Bill Farmer and the classic Goofy characterization, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Not Just a Goof is streaming now on Disney Plus. (And so is A Goofy Movie).