Beyoncé was too busy to give Chiwetel Ejiofor singing lessons for The Lion King

Chiwetel Ejiofor is starring alongside the queen that is Beyoncé in The Lion King reboot, but the 12 Years A Slave actor has joked about his character Scar’s singing voice.

Appearing on Lorraine this morning, Chiwetel Ejiofor gave some insight into the recording process for the Disney animation.

‘I suppose I was using the same kind of preparation as anything else,’ Chiwetel, 42, told host Lorraine Kelly about voice acting.

‘Just really working on trying to understand the character really, trying to understand the psychology of the character and why he does the things he does.’

Joking about his singing in the film, he described it as ‘talking in a tuneful way’.

‘I was going to ask Beyoncé [for singing lessons] but she was a little busy at the time,’ he laughed.

Mostly, the recoding is done solo, but Chiwetel did some work with Simba star Donald Glover and Florence Kasumba who voices Shenzi.

Chiwetel also revealed that villain Scar is ‘not just bad’.

‘For him, it’s an obsession with power and with status that gets wildly out of control but it is a state of being that he’s in.’

When he first saw the animation, Chiwetel admits he was ‘stunned’ by how real it looks, saying: ‘It’s such an amazing achievement.’

‘It’s amazing what they’ve done, how they’ve created this whole other space and technical achievement,’ he added. ‘It’s really going to stand the test of time.’

‘It’s a new chapter and totally next-generation – remarkable.’

Lorraine airs weekdays on ITV at 8.30am.

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