Yahoo Lifestyle Aaron Pierre And Kelvin Harrison Jr. Explore The Complex Relationship Between Men Vocalizing Their Feelings, Friendship, And More
To celebrate the recent release of Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King, I sat down with the stars of the film — Aaron Pierre (Mufasa) and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Taka) — to learn a little bit more about what it took to bring this story to life. The real-life best friends opened up about their unique voice-acting experience and the importance of men building foundational relationships with each other.
BuzzFeed: The unexpected friendship of your characters, Mufasa and Taka, as they navigate the wilderness, while on a journey of self-discovery, kind of reminds me of the friendship you two share, while making a name for yourselves in Hollywood. Did you notice any parallels between you and your characters?
Kelvin Harrison Jr.: I think he's a natural-born leader. He has a true sense of who he is and where he comes from, and it exudes through his embodiment in anything that he does. I think I naturally am always just kind of being the whiny little brother [laughs]. I kind of am, a little bit, but I'm working on it. I'm in progress, and we have that, like, even though we're born in the same year and we're just a few weeks apart in age, I definitely have little brother energy. But I've always wanted a brother as well, and that's basically the relationship.
Aaron Pierre: This is my brother in real life. Within our community, we speak about chosen family, and Kelvin is my chosen family; I will always choose Kelvin, and hopefully, he'll always choose me. Whether we do it intentionally or not. we draw from our personal relationships in the art and projects that we choose to engage with.
You all met on the set of Genius: MLK/X, and with all the stories of betrayal in Hollywood, it’s refreshing to see such a beautiful friendship come out of it, especially between Black men. What did you see in each other that made you feel safe?
AP: I feel safe around Kelvin because he matches my sincerity, and that makes me feel safe whenever I'm in an environment in which that particular thing isn't matched. I become a recluse. I become introverted, and all of a sudden, it's, "Where did Aaron go?" But with Kelvin, I immediately understood the content of his character — he's sincere, he's present, and he's intentional, and I think that's why I feel safe. Safety not only presents itself in the capacity of the physical, being physically safe, but it also is energetically...spiritually, do I feel safe in this way? And I do with Kelvin.
KHJ: I appreciate that. Likewise, man. I also would say that I appreciate his hunger. We both are constantly curious, constantly searching for truth, constantly searching for who we want to become as men, and how we want to represent ourselves. We have relentless conversations about protecting our peace, but also just trying to make sure that we're building into the men that we want to become. And he's hungry for the answers, and he's hungry for the knowledge, and that's what's up. It's as simple as that really.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is your first time doing voice work for a project. Did you find it more or less challenging to solely rely on your voice to bring the character to life versus your entire body?
AP: I've narrated a little animal documentary. He's done an audiobook, but this is the first time we're putting voices to characters, which is pretty cool.
KHJ: We didn't actually experience that dilemma in a lot of ways. I know we weren't doing the actual physicality of the lions, but the way Barry [Jenkins] set it up was that there were multiple cameras around us always. He wanted to capture the emotions associated with our voices and the performance so that when he went to the animators, it was in connection with that. It still felt like it was a full-body performance at times; I was physicalizing the entirety of the production.
AP: Kelvin likened this to doing a play, doing theater. And I think that was spot on, because doing animation can give you the opportunity, at least for us in this context — I'm referring to the poster, by the way, that's why I keep looking over there — but it gave us an opportunity to revisit scenes and revisit our characters within the specific context of those scenes. That's a really special thing, and this is something we did over three years. So when we first started this, neither Kelvin nor I had even begun to prepare for Genius: MLK/X. Then we completed filming that, and then we came back and revisited the scenes. So not only had we grown as men, but we'd also grown, hopefully, as artists. We brought a different layer...an additional layer to these characters that we started maybe two years ago at the time.
What type of prep did you do to perfect your character’s voice?
AP: I'll be honest, for me, there was an enormous amount of preparation in regards to the musical component of this. I was struggling. Lin-Manuel Miranda got me there; thank you, sir. In regards to the voice, I felt so liberated because I'd never done it before, so I didn't have anything to refer to. I had to just throw myself in there. And I was trying things and failing a lot...a lot of failing...then you find moments of success, and you try and mind those moments of success.
KHJ: You crushed the singing, buddy. He crushes the singing. Wait 'til y'all see. I know most people only heard, like, 39 minutes, or something like that, or maybe 29 minutes, whatever. But when we get to that part, I'm telling you, it's a banger. It's gonna hit iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, maybe, I don't know, Beyoncé's in this movie. Everybody's gonna be like, "WHAT, you're telling me that's Rebel Ridge? You're telling me that's Green Lantern?
AP: Fingers crossed.
KHJ: No fingers crossed, boy, it's happening. It's happened already. Bro, it's in the books! Anyway, what I did, though, is I had a dialect coach. I've been using the same dialect coach since 2016. He's incredible. We worked on the accent, and we tried to reference a lot of Jeremy Irons [voice of Scar in 1994's original animated film The Lion King] at times. Barry tried to make sure it encouraged me not to try to do a copy-and-paste. I had to find my own voice in it. I referenced a little bit of Joffrey [Baratheon] from Game of Thrones. Ultimately, it had to come from me. My lion is my own. He's a little goofy. He's got a little bit of Ron Weasley in him, too, so it's a specific sound, but that was mostly me just prepping the voice. Then the work is we play, we come in, we read the lines, we do it to the best of our ability. They're going to change, most likely. Sometimes, I did scenes two or three times over again, and I have new ideas. So, it was really just an acting exercise at a certain point, and just keeping the instrument warm and flexible.
Lastly, there have been jokes online about men not expressing themselves with their male friends or asking them follow-up questions to important things, but you two don't seem to deal with that. Why is it important for Black men and men in general to be more open about their feelings with their friends and loved ones?
KHJ: That's all we do is have deep conversations. No surface-level conversations are going to make it to the table.
AP: Firstly, that's a really thoughtful question. I think, honestly, each individual will communicate and articulate themselves in a way that is true to them. The way of navigating that is a personal preference, but my two cents is that I think it is worthwhile to explore being open, being transparent, and feeling free and liberated to share with whoever you feel safe enough to share with because internalizing, from my subjective view, I don't think much good comes of that. That's spoken as someone who spent many years internalizing and not because I didn't have anybody to connect with, not because I didn't have anybody saying, "Aaron, we're here for you." It was something I put on myself. It was something I subjected myself to. I didn't want to feel like I was burdening somebody despite how much people told me, "You're not." This is spoken from somebody who learned that actually sharing is only going to be conducive to not only my well-being but enhancing the relationships and the friendships that I have around me. Sorry, that got a bit deep [laughs].
KHJ: No, it's beautiful. This is the perfect example of how it's done. For everybody watching [or reading], you need to clap. Everybody on YouTube watching this, clap, because that was it!
What a beautiful bond they share!
Mufasa: The Lion King is in theaters now.
