A supporting character in the animated “Zootopia” films takes the spotlight in “Zootopia: Better Zoogether,” a new 4D show at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Benjamin Clawhauser, a cheetah with a desk job in the Zootopia Police Department, is represented by a large animatronic in the attraction as well as two-dimensional appearances on the big screen in the park’s Tree of Life theater.

Clawhauser is voiced by actor Nate Torrence, who visited Walt Disney World to preview the show this week ahead of its Friday debut.

In the attraction storyline, Clawhauser has time off from the ZPD and attends a concert by Gazelle, a singing gazelle, as part of the Zoogether Day celebrations.

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“He wants to get picked to be on stage as a Very Important Zootopian — the V.I.Z. — and then he messes everything up. It just felt very true to that character,” said Danny Handke, senior creative director with Walt Disney Imagineering.

“Clawhauser just felt to us like he was the eyes of the audience,” Handke said.

Nate Torrence (far right) speaks during a panel about the making of “Zootopia” and the new “Zootopia” attraction at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park this week. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Torrence — whose credits include episodes of “St. Denis Medical,” “Superstore,” “Supernatural” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” —  was surprised by the amount of freedom he was given by Disney in the voicing of the character, he said. Some of his facial expressions and physical traits were worked into the looks of Clawhauser.

“I was amazed at how much I use my hands after watching Clawhauser,” Torrence said.

For the theme-park show, “there were specific times when they came in and were like, ‘We just want to see how you say this and you’re moving around,’” he said. That gave Imagineering ideas of how the animatronic could react to the on-screen action or the watery 4D effects.

He used different acting techniques for the movie version and the Animal Kingdom version of Clawhauser, he said.

“I would say that I was very aware vocally, that I took a more live-stage approach” to the Tree of Life show because the animatronic figures speak to a live audience, he said.

“Clawhauser is our ambassador of this attraction,” said Jared Bush, chief creative officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios. “You get to see him with his glowing necklace in this [attraction] and you’ll see that in ‘Zootopia 2,’ as well.”

The “Zootopia’ sequel arrives in theaters Nov. 26.

“Nate, the actor, and Clawhauser are one and the same. There’s no way to separate them,” Bush said.

“Of all of the actors, Nate has been part of Zootopia the longest,” he said. “We do what’s called a table read, and we bring in a bunch of folks that are not tied to the movie to just read it through before we cast it. He was Clawhauser in that original read, and so we heard him and he became Clawhauser forever as a result.”

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And now, he’s animatronic.

“I flew my whole family out to see this weekend. So my mom, dad, my brothers and sisters are all waiting in a van to come see this,” Torrence said. “I’m like, I’m not letting this pass by. This is a once-a-lifer.”

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