How Disney's Mufasa Has Changed Broadway's The Lion King

The circle of life is getting bigger! Disney officially released Mufasa, a new Lion King prequel film digging into the origin stories of Mufasa and Scar, in movie theatres December 20.

Along with some infectious new songs from Hamilton writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, the movie from director Barry Jenkins adds an interesting new backstory for the iconic characters.

The next section contains slight spoilers for Mufasa.

It is newly revealing that Mufasa and Scar are spiritual brothers rather than blood relatives, and that their nature by the time we meet them in The Lion King was not so much innate as it was the result of a pretty dramatic, and by some turns traumatic, childhood and adolescence. Both, it turns out, end up orphaned under tragic circumstances—but how they process and work through that trauma makes all the difference as to who ends up a loner villain and who becomes king of the Pride Lands.

Mufasa has several new plot points to reveal: Scar is not the name that was on his lion birth certificate, part of the bad blood between the two characters revolves around a painful love triangle, and, perhaps most notably, The Lion King as a stage musical exists within the Lion King cinematic universe (one hopes those animals are all getting payouts for their life rights!).

But of course, The Lion King isn’t just a cinematic universe. Playbill recently had the chance to catch the new film alongside longtime Lion King Broadway stars L. Steven Taylor (who will celebrate his 20th year as Mufasa in 2025) and Stephen Carlile (who'se played Scar for eight years.). Afterwards, the two veterans broke down their reactions to the new movie and how it might affect their performances in the stage show (currently in its 27th year at the Minskoff Theatre).

The below conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Let’s start by talking about The Lion King separate from Mufasa. We don’t learn a ton of backstory about Mufasa and Scar in the original movie or the stage show. Have you two invented your own?

L. Steven Taylor: We’ve sourced from the animated feature and growing up with that, and then the text of the show. It’s interesting, because like you say, we never really drop into what the actual history is between them. It’s just bad blood. Mufasa is the type, or at least I have him this way in my brain, that he tries to find the good in everybody. He knows that there’s good in Scar, and he’s frustrated that he can’t pull it out. That’s my backstory.

Stephen Carlile: I have a line in the show, that “Nobody loved me—there’s the rub—not even as a cub.” I always think of the mother, our mother, who would always give everything to him. I have this thing where she scratched me when I tried to eat Mufasa’s food, and that’s why it gets tough for me in “The Madness of King Scar.” For me, there was always that mother thing going on.

Do you view Scar as an innately bad character, or is that a judgement you stay away from as an actor?

Carlile: The villain would never think of themselves as the villain. It’s always everyone else’s fault. You justify every single thing that you do, and there’s always a reason why you know it’s everybody else’s fault. I focus on the character, not on his badness. I focus on what he wants. Ultimately, Scar wants revenge. He wants to be king, and he wants to do good for the world—it would be much better under his guidance. It wouldn’t be, but he thinks it would be.

What do you think makes him become a villain, at least in the context of this story?

Carlile: Everything about him is just so ghastly. Every joint and bone hurts him—he’s oozing with pain. He doesn’t get what he wants, and I think that makes him extremely grouchy. And there’s a snowball effect. He doesn’t get one thing, doesn’t get another, doesn’t get the girl, his mother hates him—and so he just feels really out of touch.

Okay, and now Mufasa. What did we think?

Taylor: I really enjoyed it! People are so protective of the musical and the animated movie, so I think it’s a really tricky and big undertaking to add to the canon while still honoring that. But I think this movie does such a great job. It’s offering some really different perspectives, adding layers to the relationship between the two brothers growing up. I think people are going to find it interesting to see these characters in this new light. And it’s stunning to look at, too.

On stage, Mufasa just feels like this wise, all-knowing sage almost. I found it so cool the way this movie makes sure we know he wasn’t just born that way, that that quality is the result of a hard life.

Taylor: Something that really stuck out for me was the lack of nurturing Scar got because of who he was around, versus Mufasa. Both of these characters, at least in how they’re portrayed in this movie, had the capacity for greatness. Mufasa’s was just nurtured. We all start with the same dream, that we’re going to do great things. It’s who’s around you to nurture it. I think if Mufasa had gone unnurtured, he would have ended up somewhere closer to who Scar is.

Yeah, it’s well plotted to me that they made it so we have these two characters with actually quite similar baggage, with one choosing to process that and become a great leader as a result and the other descending into anger and bitterness.

Carlile: I think there’s something in you, a chemical imbalance that Scar probably has. I think that Scar, even if he was shown the nurturing, might not have had the capacity to accept it.

Taylor: And that plays into what my Mufasa sees in Scar in a cool way, too.

Speaking of which, I think the big question becomes if the plot of this movie is going to change up either of your performances in the stage show.

Taylor: Oh, it immediately has me thinking how to add this backstory into the show.

Carlile: It’s going to change everything for us. I think when we first meet each other in the beginning, I’m going to have this whole film in my brain. And my calling for Sarabi at the end is going to have a lot more weight. It might be five minutes longer. I already play that like I’ve always loved her, so this is just reinforcing that.

Oh wow, so you were actually ahead of that “new” bit of backstory before this movie?

Carlile: Yeah. It just made sense for me. In those bad blood situations, there’s almost always a woman involved.

Taylor: I think this movie is going to give me license to add another layer of softness towards you. When we meet these characters, they’re fully grown, so the history between them has kind of stacked up. But this has reminded me to give a layer of softness, because at the end of the day, Mufasa knows that Scar is not inherently evil. He makes bad choices. I like the idea of Mufasa and Scar coming from the same place in life, that they’re not actually brothers but both orphans. I like the hierarchy of coming from that lineage, but Simba being next in line, which makes Mufasa hate Simba.

Another interesting point of divergence between the two characters to me was how Mufasa is forced to hang around the women of the pride. That seems like a pointed choice that maybe explains why Mufasa has a different response to what happens to him than Scar does.

Taylor: That really resonated with me. In real life, I was raised by my grandmother and my aunt. I think that female influence is a huge part of what makes Mufasa a great leader, having access to that softness. And to knowing what is needed.

Carlile: I’ve always thought the world should be run by women.

Taylor: In this film, you hear Mufasa’s foster mom tell him for the first time that "They live in you" message. In our show, Mufasa tells Simba that came from his father. But I really love that it comes from the mother in this movie. I love that it becomes our ancestors are watching over us as opposed to the great kings of the past, because I think that alludes to even Simba’s daughter [shown in Mufasa], and how she will go on to be the next leader of the pride.

We also learn a lot more about Sarabi in this movie. In the original film and stage show, I feel like we don’t learn a lot about who she is. But in Mufasa, it’s kind of cool seeing how strong she is, how much of her relationship with Mufasa is because they are equals in many ways.

Taylor: The stage show focuses more on Nala, but it’s that same lineage. Nala is the warrior queen, like we get to see Sarabi be in this film. In the stage show, that’s something that Nala got from the strong women around her.

So obviously, no matter what new backstory you two have in your minds, the text of The Lion King won’t be changing. What is the use for you as actors to have backstories like that, even if the audience doesn’t necessarily get all of the specifics of them?

Carlile: It gives it weight. We’ve all had backgrounds in our mind, but this is going to be something different. It gives the performance weight, something behind the eyes that you’re visualizing. It makes the character whole, the performer whole.

Taylor: I don’t think this show would have survived for 27 years without evolving. And I think the reason it’s been able to evolve is because people continue to come in and find new things about the show. I’ve been with the show for almost 20 years, and I definitely would not have had that amount of longevity if it weren’t for other people giving me different ideas and different takes on this character. This is going to add to the next incarnation of how we think about these roles. And people that see this film and then come watch our show, they’re going to view it differently, even if they’ve already seen it.

Carlile: My performance changes a lot night to night. Scar can be a bit crazy sometimes. It depends on what I’ve been doing that week. If I’ve been hanging out with my dog a lot, then suddenly it’ll be quite dog-like. If I’m playing with my children a lot, it becomes childlike. If you were watching it every single night, you wouldn’t know that I’m thinking about something different, but I’m always thinking about something different, and I find that useful.

Yeah. The Lion King’s story and characters can seem so mythical, archetypal. I think that’s what helps it reach people on that cellular level. But if you two play mythical and archetypal, you’d think it could get quite general and bland.

Taylor: Exactly. The characters in this show are the hero, the villain, the sidekick—all these archetypes. But layered into that are very real-life issues and obstacles that people relate to, and relate to quite specifically. This movie really gets that. You feel bad for Scar, and you see how a person, how any of us, presented with circumstances would have at least a difficult decision: to rise up and turn the other cheek, or descend.