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WATCH | How Kelvin Harrison Jr. Compartmentalized Voicing Taka
essencemagazine
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5/18/2025
In Mufasa: The Lion King, Kelvin Harrison Jr. brings unexpected depth and vulnerability to Taka—the young lion who will one day become the infamous Scar.
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Lifestyle
Transcript
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00:00
You're an amazing actor, so I'm pretty sure you know how to compartmentalize, but I know
00:04
different actors have different methods of the way that they prepare. But how did you prepare
00:09
emotionally and vocally to step into a character with such a rich and dark legacy?
00:16
It was a lot of watching Jeremy Irons, because that was the one that I resonated with at first,
00:22
and watching his interviews. Because I think what happened with him was he's a fantastic actor,
00:29
brilliant, brilliant, brilliant actor. And he brings a lot of his nuances and where he's from
00:39
into that role. Jeremy sometimes sounds like that in interviews. And I was like, well,
00:46
that's established already. And if I were to establish a character and they hired me for
00:51
some of the qualities and sensibilities that I had, and then they asked me just, I've done that before.
00:56
A lot of people, actors do that. You bring some of your sensibilities to the role in the given
01:00
circumstance. But now my job was to continue his legacy. So then I had to understand who was he
01:07
as well. Who was Jeremy? Who was Scar? And then who was written on the page? In addition to that,
01:13
I have a fantastic dialect coach named Jerome Butler that I've worked with since 2016 when I started
01:18
working on Monster with A$AP Rocky, Jennifer Hudson, and Jeffrey Wright. And he's been with me on every
01:27
project since. And so I was like, let's build this guy. And we used some different references like
01:32
Draco from Harry Potter at times, and then like Joffrey from Game of Thrones. And then to lighten it,
01:40
we started using like Ron Weasley at moments and then finding our own rhythm of it and just playing
01:45
with pacing. But the villainous aspect, I think, came from what is the intellectual processing of
01:54
what that means. And to me, it was about finding a way to speak your truth without getting in trouble.
02:00
You know, when people are starting to try to silence you, then that's when you come up with
02:04
those sly, witty remarks to make your point known that you see it, you hear it, because you want to
02:09
know that I know. You know, you're not going to just play me like that. I know. And I think that's
02:14
where the scar starts to come out and the dragging and the drama and blah, blah, blah, you know,
02:22
whatever that is. And then, you know, talk, guys, a little bit like, you know, it's like not
02:29
thinking too much. It's like there's no worries in the world kind of thing. So that was how I
02:33
compartmentalized it and kind of started to build a character.
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