Interview with Broadway's Mufasa
- Samuel E. Wright!

You've done more than 1,000 performances as Mufasa - do you still get nervous or excited before each show?
Not so much nervous anymore. Excited. Uplifted. Inspired. I get to watch all these wonderful puppets and the wonderful work that people are doing with them, so it uplifts me. I only get kind of nervous when it comes to the stunty things that I do - the dangerous things, like falling off the wall.

You actually do stunts in the show?
Well, it's funny, when you're doing a Broadway show, people don't consider the things that you do stunts, because they think stunts are done on television and in the movies. But if you do something that's incredibly dangerous every night � I don't know any stuntman who would do a fall off of a wall 1,000 times in his lifetime!

Have you ever had any close calls?
Yeah, even though I'm attached to a cable, there are very specific things that have to go absolutely right every single night or someone could get very hurt. It is a dangerous show, but that also makes it exciting performance-wise. A couple of times, in the scene where the lions are caught and things didn't go right, I ended up falling very hard - falling at 32-feet-per-second hard! But it's taught me a lesson about falling.

And what's that?
I used to always wonder why you would hear these news stories about babies surviving 12-story falls. And probably the reason why I've survived all these falls is because I was very relaxed, just like a child. I didn't even know I was falling because it happened so quickly. So by the time I hit the floor, I just go, "Wow, what was that Mac truck that just ran over me?" One time, the fall knocked me out for a little while. According to the lionesses, I just kind of lay there and grimaced and made funny noises.

OK, so let's back up, how does your day at the theater start?
I arrive at the theater earlier probably than most people in the show and even the crew, except for stage management. I get there at about 4 or 5 o'clock because I have a long preparation, and I have to shop.

Uh � you have to shop?
Yes. I have to get candles and incense and little toys for people in the show and around the theater, just to keep our spirits up.

That's wonderful!
And I get something to eat. At 6 p.m., I start my prep: I take a shower and start putting on my makeup, which takes about 45 minutes. At 7 p.m., I start to warm up, and then at 7:30 I get dressed. And by a quarter to 8, I'm on the stage ready to come up Pride Rock and start the show. Then Rafiki sings "Nants ingonyama bagithi baba." You know what that means, don't you?

No �
"This way a lion comes." She's announcing the arrival of Mufasa.

Oh, that's great! So, is it crazy backstage during the show?
It's like a circus backstage. There's as much a show backstage as onstage. Backstage, we have what we call tracks. You stay on that track and you don't vary from it because things are going in, coming out, and people are changing costumes, making entrances and exits. And if you're in the wrong place, somebody can get hurt. Nobody is going to be there to tell you to get out of the way when the boneyard is being lowered.

During your warm-up, are you doing any mental preparation to get into the mindset of Mufasa?
Yeah, I'm turning into a 350-pound lion. Mufasa is quite a different person than me. I'm a 53-year-old man who would prefer to sit down, read the newspaper, and enjoy a nice glass of wine. But Mufasa lives on the African savannah, and he's a protective 350-pound lion. And the physical things that he does onstage transcend my physicality, so I have to kind of let him take over. And I'm always constantly surprised at what I'm capable of doing when in the character of Mufasa - making turns that are cat-like and very quick, and leaping and jumping and not even thinking about how I'm going to land or how far I'm going to go. There's something that takes over, something very cat-like and animal-like, that protects me through the whole show.

Are you like Mufasa?
Yeah, I have a very protective nature. I think Mufasa is very loving toward Simba, and I feel the same way about my children. And also the children that I teach - my wife and I have a performing arts school and we spend a lot of time with the children because we do about eight productions a year. But I don't move like Mufasa if I don't have to. I keep in shape but I don't tend to climb trees.

Have you gotten used to wearing the amazing costume?
The costumes that Michael Curry built are not as heavy as a lot of people would think they are. He's managed to take all of the weight out of them, but because they're large they have what you call inertia. So even though that huge helmet is very light, when you turn your head, it wants to keep going in the direction that you just turned.

What's your favorite part of the show?
My death, because then I can sit down [laughs]. My favorite parts of the show are when I'm with Simba. The kids are great. All of the boys and the young ladies have been absolutely wonderful, and they're very special children to me and to the role. It's just fascinating to do a performance with somebody that small and that inexperienced and watch them grow over the six-month period.

And they literally grow, right?
They come into the show when they're tiny little kids. Because the show is so physical, after about six months, they turn into these fine physical specimens of youth. And they also weigh more! I have to pick them up and do a lot of physical stuff with them so by the time it's six months down the road, it goes from "yes" to "ugh!" But we manage to get through it. There have been so many of them and it's so heartbreaking when they leave that I hate they actually grow up, but that's all a part of life.

Which guests have you been really excited to meet?
I've met just about everybody I could possibly meet. But there was one person that just blew me away: John Glenn. He's my hero. I come from that generation where an astronaut was a crazy person who sat on top of a bomb and got blown into outer space where we had never been. And just to be in the same room with a person who had that kind of bravery and foresight and who went back again as an older man. He exudes the strength that a hero is. His wife is also a hero because she survived it.

What did John Glenn say to you?
He just thought that it was the most amazing performance that he had ever seen. I thought he was just saying that, but his wife pulled me aside and said, "No, he's being very honest." His wife says he has this feeling for me through my performance. I can not explain to you the connection between us. I just felt like I knew him so well, like he was my father or something. It was really great, 'cause I never thought I'd ever meet John Glenn.

Has anything funny or memorable ever happened with the audience?
As actors, we have to make the fourth wall exist because we have a lot of children at the performances and they'll talk to you during the entire show. They say the lines to you and they know what's going to happen. So just before Scar says, "Long live the king," you hear the kids say it. It can be disconcerting to actually hear them. I usually don't pay any attention to them. But one night, I came charging up the staircase for the hyena attack and I must have been particularly fearsome, because it just scared some kid to death and he was screaming and crying. I'm not supposed to even pay any attention to the audience but the kid was crying so much I couldn't help it. So I just turned and looked down at him and smiled and he stopped crying! The audience seemed to appreciate it. And I just felt terrible about it because I had broken the fourth wall but I couldn't help it -I wanted to let him know that I wasn't mad.

Wow, you must be a pretty convincing lion!
It's an interesting story, that whole thing about being a lion. I do a lot of growling in the show, and I get asked a lot of times, "How do you do the growling and not lose your voice?" [Before the show started], because I didn't know particularly how an animal growls, I'd go to the Bronx Zoo every day and study all the growling animals, specifically the lions. And each time, I'd try a growl and the lion would just yawn or walk away. I thought I was never going to be able to find something to make the creature react. So one day, I started working on trying to put the sound not on my vocal chords but up into my soft palate which is where I thought animals were putting their growls. And I started getting better and better at this noise and decided to try it on the lion. I went to the Bronx Zoo and I stood by the lion's cage and I went, "Arghh!" And he actually jumped up!

Do you have any words of advice for the actor who's playing Mufasa in the new Los Angeles production of "The Lion King"?
Hang on! Because when Mufasa grabs you in the midst of the moment, and when you're doing what the director Julie Taymor wants, he will take you on a trip. Enjoy the role. It's a wonderful role to play. And take care of yourself- drink lots of juice and stay fit. And be very loving to everybody in the company, especially the two guys who are in charge of making you fly. You do not want to make them angry!

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