Mufasa star Mads Mikkelsen was more nervous than excited to sing

Mikkelsen’s character is tasked with singing the song Bye Bye, one of several new tracks written for the film by Lin Manuel Miranda, and speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, he admitted to being a little intimidated by the prospect.

“I was more nervous than excited, because I’d never done it before,” he said. “That said, after… when the first half hour was over, I started to get excited, and we found a key 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 isn’t the only thing that made this film quite a different acting process than Mikkelsen was used to – there’s also the small way of turning his performance into a photorealistic CGI lion.

The process was relatively complicated, and Mikkelsen explained that director Barry Jenkins – best known for his Oscar-winning film Moonlight – had a very unique approach.

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“Obviously we’re starting from scratch,” he said. “We have a story, start with maybe a drawing, get inspired. We do a few scenes, different tempos, different energies, and then Barry goes away, comes back with the animated version, like the very first draft. And then we get inspired again and start spinning again.

“And then we’ll come up with an idea, change it a little bit here. So we’re involved in how we’re here, and we’re part of the process. Obviously Barry goes home and becomes the puppeteer.”

He continued: “(Normally) you go through the lines and it’s always done, then you move on to the next scene. That wasn’t the case here, we were going back to scenes because Barry had an idea, or he s was inspired by it for something we did and you want to try something.

“And we can only do that perhaps in the theater, but we never do that in the cinema!”

Mufasa: The Lion King will arrive in theaters on Friday December 20, 2024.

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