Mufasa star Mads Mikkelsen was more nervous than excited about singing
The Hannibal star plays villain Kiros in Barry Jenkins's new prequel.
In some ways, playing the character of Kiros in Mufasa: The Lion King isn't too much of a departure for Mads Mikkelsen – the latest in a long line of villains the Danish actor has played, following the likes of Le Chiffre, Hannibal and Gellert Grindelwald.
But in other ways, it was a whole new world for Mikkelsen, not least because for the first time in his career he had to do something a little outside his comfort zone: sing a musical number.
Mikkelsen's character is responsible for singing the song Bye Bye, one of many new tracks written for the film by Lin Manuel Miranda, and speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com he admitted to being a little daunted by the prospect.
"I was more nervous than I was excited, because I've never done it before," he said. "Having said that, after… when the first half hour was passed, then I started getting excited, and we found a key into and I got a lot of help."
He added: "And, you know, let the character be the singer, not you. I mean, forget about yourself, just let the character be the singer. And that helped tremendously."
Of course, the musical aspect wasn't the only thing that made this film a rather different acting process than Mikkelsen was used to – there's also the small manner of having his performance turned into a CGI, photorealistic lion.
The process was a relatively complicated one, and Mikkelsen explained that director Barry Jenkins – best known for his Oscar-winning film Moonlight – had a very unique approach.
Read more:
- Mufasa: The Lion King soundtrack – Lin-Manuel Miranda on inspiration behind new songs
- Mufasa: The Lion King review – A flawed but fitfully powerful CG prequel
"Obviously we start from scratch," he said. "We have a story, start with maybe one drawing, we get inspired. We do a couple scenes, different tempos, energies, and then Barry goes away, come back with the animated version of it, like the very first draft. And then we get inspired again, and we start shooting again.
"And then we will come up with an idea, change a little here. So we are involved in the manner that we are there, and we are part of the process, obviously, Barry goes home and becomes the puppet master."
He continued: "[Normally] you go through lines and it's always done, and then you move on to the next scene. That was not the case here, we would come back to the scenes because Barry had an idea, or he got inspired for something we did, and you want to try something out.
"And you can only do that maybe in theatre, but you never do that on film!"
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Mufasa: The Lion King will land in cinemas on Friday 20th December 2024.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
