WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
While Kelvin Harrison Jr. listened to original Scar voice actor Jeremy Irons to guide his portrayal of Taka/Scar in Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” some other iconic characters from pop culture ultimately helped him find the cadence he was looking for.
“I also have a great dialect coach who pulled some samples from Jeremy Irons, but I was also looking at Ron Weasley from ‘Harry Potter’ at one point, Joffrey from ‘Game of Thrones’ — a nasty sound, I love it. And I was like, ‘Let me put some of that privilege in there, and then we put it all together, and there you go, Taka, Scar,” Harrison explained to TheWrap.
Naturally, “Mufasa” tells the origin story of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre), the first leader of the African savanna’s Pride Lands — but truly it functions as the telling of Scar’s genesis as well. Taka is a young cub born from a royal bloodline who befriends Mufasa after he’s literally washed away from his family. As the two cubs grow together in brotherhood and eventually enter young adulthood, a series of events ultimately lead Taka to resent Mufasa and jealousy consumes him.
In an attempt to bring a courageous Mufasa down, Taka makes a deadly deal, and in this moment, viewers can audibly and visually see Taka’s transition into who we traditionally know and have heard as Scar.
“It was my audition scene, actually, and that’s how I got the job. I came in originally at the top of the film kind of in the same tone [as Scar’s traditional voice], and Barry [Jenkins] was like, ‘Wait, hold it, save it. Cause we want this moment to feel like it’s meaningful, we have to understand the shift, and what we knew Scar to be,’” Harrison said.
He continued: “So we spent more time trying to figure out that pre-Scar voice, that Taka sound, which was just a lot of light and playing in a higher register sound, and a little bit of loftiness and performing regality, and it was really fun.”
“Mufasa: The Lion King” is now in theaters.
