Lion King's JD McCrary and Shahadi Wright Joseph Speak to FlickDirect

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

you guys were not born in 1984 oh yeah but the original it was something that you did for research for this film that you revisited the film yeah I think that I did watch it a little bit more before we started filming just to really remember the character and remember you know what she is about so I think that that was that was great practice for it I think that if you are in the Lion King film the best research and the best review for it is to just watch the film yeah same here I watched the movie like three times before I did audition you and got the role you saw yeah it worked yeah you know when you see the trailer comparison for example yes like it blows your mind how it's so faithful to the original so were your concern about okay am I need to do something similar or I'm gonna have a little fun with this one little tweak here and there yeah I think that I put my own spin on it I did keep in mind that I have to stick to the script yeah improvise anything like that but I did put my my own spin on it I put Jadey but the great thing is that with our director even if we did improvise or like if we didn't memorize our lines he would basically be okay with it as long as we were getting it done and you know bringing the story to life so that's what I really loved about key word was I knew our lives yeah we're precious yeah in the bond between your characters is amazing right you get to record it scenes together yeah we did we were in a black box theater at home I don't know why they call it a black box theater cuz everything in there was white but sure yeah but yeah there was this big carpet that we couldn't like walk around we could act it out we could move around like kind of like this but not like this at all yeah yeah we were able to act out the movie and we were in the same room yeah and that that really helped with our chemistry and the relationship between nollans and LA and DP you being compared to Michael Jackson so how do you feel about that it's like complete honor just being compared to one of the biggest names in music everyone knows Michael Jackson people that don't speak the language that he did know Michael Jackson Michael Jackson I'm just being compared to him I feel like I'm not even worthy but I guess other people think that I am and so it's a huge blessing so how do you have an awesome career you mean in these great films like in hairspray so what is ahead of you and what would you like to do in the future I think that my resume is pretty unpredictable because I've done horror and I've done musical theater and I'm doing film now so I think that I kind of just want to you know follow where my path is taking me because I mean I've kind of just trusted it so far and it's taking me very far as you can see and I very much enjoy that thank you so much for your time