Chatting with Entertainment Weekly, comedian Ernie Sabella said he was the cause of Pumbaa’s flatulence in the original 1994 Lion King, which he voiced. No, not for the reason you are thinking…
The characters of Timon & Pumbaa in the original The Lion King were also born thanks to characterization their original voice actors, Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella: interviewed by Entertainment Weekly, the two confirmed the dynamics that gave rise to the meerkat et al warthog friends of Simba. Sabella in particular told us where the outrageous idea of associating her with a Disney character came from flatulence… before continuing, let’s remember that in the original versions of the cartoons, the voices are recorded Before to create the animation: from this derive the decisions to change something during the work.
The Lion King, Pumbaa’s farts re-enacted by Ernie Sabella
In the period in which Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella they performed at Broadway in an edition of Bullies & Dollsin 1992, the Disney contacted them for a auditionto give voice to the hyenas of the Lion King (1994), still titled “The King of the Jungle” at the time. The two asked if they could meet perform togetherimprovising: the performance, in total synchrony that Sabella and Lane had of course, left the co-director Roger Allers of stucco. A few months later, when they already thought that they would never be contacted again, they were hired instead, but the Disney creatives thought that their agreement was wasted on hyenas: they had created two characters especially for them, Timon & Pumbaa. Which is rare in the making of an animated film, precisely so as not to lose this magic, Sabella and Lane they recorded the lines together, when normally you register the roles separately. It was during one of the sessions that Ernie began to torture your colleague. Sabella says:
We had done a long weekend of five performances, Friday, Saturday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday. Then we had a recording session at Disney early in the morning, usually it was at 10, but this time it was at 9. So we arrived, pretty broken after five performancesand to warm up the engines I started making these sounds just as Nathan was reading his lines. He kept laughing, desperate: “Please, stop, stop!” I said: “I’ll stop it”, but I continued! This is how Pumbaa became the first and only Disney character with flatulence!
As Lane explains, in the end not only i farts were integrated into the character by popular acclaim, but even the same song “Hakuna Matata” was enriched with this aspect of… characterization. It was not the first time that Disney artists showed themselves open to what was happening in the recording booth with the actors: all the first storyboards of Aladdin concerning the scenes of Genius they had been trashed, because Robin Williams he improvised too many pearls that could not be ignored!
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