Jon Favreau's best 'Lion King' direction for James Earl Jones? 'Just do what you do'

Anybody would feel lucky to work with James Earl Jones, but it was especially cool for the director of the new version of “The Lion King” – and noted “Star Wars” super fan – Jon Favreau.

Jones’ legendary bass voice lent a fearsome edge to Darth Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, though the 88-year-old actor is equally famous as the voice of cable-news authority (“This is CNN”), bringing warmth to films like “Field of Dreams” and giving life to Mufasa in 1994's original animated “Lion King.”

Mufasa returns in the computer-animated redo (in theaters Friday) as the wise father and ruler whose tragic end sends son Simba (Donald Glover) on his own hero’s journey, and Jones is back, too.

Reaching out to him was a no-brainer, but actually recording Jones as Mufasa again was “a little surreal,” Favreau tells USA TODAY. “All you can say is, ‘Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm hearing you read these lines.’ It hits you so deeply. It's beyond just appreciating a performance. It's tapping into something that's inside of you.”

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But because Jones has played such a prominent role in Favreau’s pop-culture life, “it was hard to not be intimidated,” the director says. “I remember when we were recording his voice for Mufasa, he asked me if I had any direction for him, and I didn't know what to say. It was like, ‘Just do what you do. You are him.’

“It would be like him asking me how to play Darth Vader. You've created this character and decades have gone and we've all grown with it,” says Favreau, who himself has a few “Star Wars” credits: He voiced the alien Rio in “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and is the executive producer and writer on the upcoming Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”

Jones is just one of many high-profile names in Favreau’s new “Lion King” – in addition to Glover, the cast also includes Beyonce as Simba’s childhood BFF Nala, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the villainous Scar, Billy Eichner as meerkat Timon and Seth Rogen as warthog Pumbaa. But while Mufasa needed to be a throwback of sorts, Favreau wanted his newcomers to put their own spin on the characters.

“In something that appears to be live-action or photorealistic, if you play the style of humor from the animated movie, it just wouldn't feel right,” Favreau says. “The tone works well in 2-D, but you make the characters more real and it starts to not feel as naturalistic.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Lion King': Jon Favreau told James Earl Jones to 'do what you do'