1 of 5 | Tiffany Boone, seen in her professional headshot, voices Sarabi in “Mufasa: The Lion King.” Photo courtesy of Ashley Chappell @flxashstudios
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 (UPI) — Mufasa: The Lion King star Tiffany Boone said the prequel film, in theaters Friday, forced her to overcome a childhood fear of singing in public.
Boone, 37, voices Sarabi, a lion that Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) meet in the wilderness of Africa. She sings “Tell Me It’s You,” the film’s love song, with Pierre.
“I had a bit of a phobia about singing in front of people,” Boone told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. “You’re in The Lion King, you have to sing and the music is written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, it’s a lot of pressure.”
The fear came after a middle school talent show. Boone got through the performance but remembered something discouraging that her mother said.
“She told me afterward that people were laughing at me,” Boone said. “So, I decided I must not be very good and I stopped singing.”
After repeating this story on her Mufasa press tour, Boone said her mother did not remember the incident and regretted saying that.
This time, Boone received support from Miranda, who wrote seven new songs for the film. He sent colleagues to conduct music classes for the cast.
“It was just vocal warm-ups, singing different songs, learning these songs, doing them over and over again and changing different parts,” Boone said.
Boone hired Doug Peck as her personal vocal coach in addition to the Miranda team’s weekly sessions. She said her practice songs before “Tell Me It’s You” included “Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog and several Beyonce songs.
Miranda only heard Boone sing “Tell Me It’s You” once before she recorded it for the movie. She said he had written the song to suit her vocal range.
“He popped in at the end on Zoom and they had me sing ‘Tell Me It’s You’ again for him, no pressure,” Boone said. “After we were done, he was like, ‘That was perfect. That was beautiful.”
Even though she won Miranda’s approval, the music team’s comparison to The Lion King‘s big love song still intimidated Boone.
“They said to me, ‘Oh, it’s kind of like this film’s version of ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight,'” Boone said, adding that she considers the Elton John-Tim Rice ballad “one of the greatest Disney songs ever.”
Disney movies and songs had been in Boone’s life since childhood. Even though Boone feared public singing, her mother reminded her she had no issues singing along with the movies in private, leading her mother to beg her to “Please, stop singing these songs.”
Boone had professional dreams from an early age, going to acting classes in middle school and a performing arts high school. She appeared on stage in “The Elves and the Shoemaker” at age 8.
“I was an elf,” Boone recalled.
She moved to Los Angeles from Baltimore at age 18 and graduated from CalArts with a bachelor in fine arts degree in acting. One of her first movies, the indie high school slasher comedy, Detention, led to two lifelong connections.
She married co-star Marque Richardson and has remained friends with Sara Amini, who played a student in the background. Since playing a goth girl, Boone has worked steadily in TV shows like The Following, Hunters, Nine Perfect Strangers and this year’s The Big Cigar.
Boone said she had auditioned for voiceover roles before Mufasa, but was never hired.
“I actually quit auditioning for voiceover work a few years ago,” Boone said. “I only changed my mind because an audition came across my desk that said Lion King and it was directed by Barry Jenkins.”
“Tell Me It’s You” could become one of those Disney songs a new generation of kids sing until their parents grow tired of it. Boone is awaiting the audience’s reaction to her song.
“I’m excited to see what audiences, especially the kids, feel about the music and if they like that song,” she said.
While the world will finally hear Boone sing, no one will hear her roar, despite playing a lion.
She said a roaring scene existed, but it was deleted from the film before she ever saw the animation.
“There was a scene where the boys were trying to roar bigger than each other,” Boone said. “Sarabi came in and roared better than both of them and was like, ‘Can we move on now?'”
