Yahoo Movies Mads Mikkelsen found singing for Mufasa: The Lion King 'scary'
The Hannibal actor speaks to Yahoo UK about the terrifying prospect of getting his own Disney villain song in the Lion King prequel.
Watch: Mads Mikkelsen discusses singing for Mufasa: The Lion King
Before Mufasa: The Lion King Mads Mikkelsen had never considered singing for a movie, which is why he found it quite a scary prospect when he had to do so for the Disney movie because by his own admission to Yahoo UK he's "not a singer".
The Hannibal star portrays Kiros, the terrifying white lion that becomes a foil to a young Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and his adoptive brother Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and forces them to seek out a new home after he and his pride attack their one. Kiros is an apt predecessor of The Lion King's iconic villain Scar not just because he is scary but because he has a villain song as catchy as Be Prepared called Bye Bye.
Mikkelsen admits to feeling pressure to doing the song justice, telling Yahoo: "[It was] a bit scary. I'm not a singer and I do have a lot of colleagues who are really good singers and actors, I'm not one of them!
"I spent the first half hour just figuring out how to approach this, but they were happy and we did it through the character. [It was] not so much, like, let's see what Mads can do with his voice. It's much more let Kiros do the song, and that was fun."
Director Barry Jenkins gives Mikkelsen more credit than he will give himself, saying that the actor was "really game" to do whatever it took to bring the albino lion to life both through singing and acting.
"It was great working with him, Mads was really game," Jenkins explains. "Mads Mikkelsen has become the villain of all villains and so it was a very obvious to think of him for this. What I loved was when I called him up, offered the idea of him taking this role, he was very thoughtful about it. He was like, 'Well, why is Kiros the way he is?'
"And so we had a really lovely conversation about these lions who have this genetic abnormality, how this idea of being other, being ostracised, sometimes that can turn a person to evolve towards the best version of themselves or towards the worst version.
"I think Mads really... not identified with that, but he understood it in a way that he's like, 'oh, I know how to play this person now, not as a villain, as a human being.'"
Mikkelsen wasn't the only actor to find the prospect of singing for a franchise as iconic as The Lion King mildly terrifying as lead actor Aaron Pierre told Yahoo UK he found the prospect nerve-wracking.
"I was nervous, I was massively nervous," Pierre explains. "This is the first time that I ever sang professionally in any professional context. In my shower, that's as far as it went."
He adds: "Lin-Manuel Miranda is phenomenal at what he does and he's a beautiful artist, more importantly, he is a beautiful human being. But he really wrote just phenomenal songs and gave us all the tools we needed in order to engage with them in a way that fulfilled them to their capacity as opposed to any half-a**ed versions of them.
"He gave us all the tools we needed and created a safe space to get it wrong and I think that's great, when you feel safe that can only be conducive to your best work."
Read more:
What to know about Mufasa: The Lion King
Why did Barry Jenkins decide to make Mufasa after Oscars glory?
Mikkelsen also tells Yahoo UK of his approach to Kiros, and how important it is to understand the humanity of a villain when playing them. The actor has portrayed several iconic villains over the years, from Le Chiffre in Casino Royale to Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal, so it's something he's always tried to do.
He explains that Kiros' actions can be understood as a result of his experiences: "I don't think it comes from a bad place. What Kiros is doing, it comes from like at a very early age his heart turned really dark, when you're outcast of your family and out of society in general, and you have to survive on your own four legs that will do something with anyone.
"And so when we see him now, he's a formidable strong lion and he made his own little pride that wants to slice of the cake as well, and it's understandable. The problem is he wants the entire cake!"
Mikkelsen goes on to share how much he appreciated Jenkins' approach to the animation, saying the director worked with him to build the character of Kiros for quite some time before he was finished with the project. It was also impressive given the prequel was an entirely new story with nothing to fall back on, like the first live-action Lion King could.
"This is creating it from scratch out of nothing, out of something inside of Barry's head," Mikkelsen says. "And so his job is to translate what's in there and bring us all in the same ship, and he was was amazing at that. Every time we had questions [he'd say] 'it's going to look like this, this is the feel. Let's do a few different variations of tempo and energy, and the tone of it.
"He would go away and come back with something animated and we will do the whole thing again. So it was something we rarely do, creating a character for that long a time span was really fun. But the funniest step was obviously when we left it it was kind of semi-animated, and once we saw it on the big screen it was like 'OK, wow that's what we'd done there.'"
Mufasa: The Lion King premieres in cinemas on Friday, 20 December.
