Here's who he practiced singing 'Hakuna Matata' with!
Can’t wait for Disney’s remake of The Lion King to arrive!? Neither can Seth Rogen, and he’s in it!
ET’s Courtney Tezeno spoke with the hilarious actor to discuss playing Pumba, the lovable warthog, as well as joining a truly star-studded cast that includes Donald Glover, Beyonce and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
“It’s thrilling!” he said at Netflix’s “Summer of Love” press day. “Its amazing for many reasons.”
“One is because I’m a big fan of The Lion King. Two is because it’s the most expensive movie I'll have anything to do with probably, so that’s thrilling," Seth continued. "Jon Favreau, the director, I’ve known since I was 18, is a very close friend of mine. So again, it’s always exciting to get to work with people that you know well. Yeah and we're good friends. Overall it's surreal. It will be weird when it comes out.”
And Seth isn’t the only one who’s ecstatic over playing a part in the African adventure. His wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, who was on hand to discuss her directorial debut, Netflix's Like Father, also couldn’t hide her excitement, even sharing how her husband got the big news.
“I mean, I'll be honest, there was some time when we would practice 'Hakuna Matata' together and I got to be Timon and it was amazing,” she said. “I will say I'm sure Billy Eichner (who plays the endearing meerkat) has a much better voice than I do, but I was so psyched! I mean, it didn’t take any convincing for me. He was like, 'I'm gonna be Pumba!' and I was like, 'This is the coolest thing ever!'”
Meanwhile, in Like Father, which Lauren also wrote, Kristen Bell’s character is left at the altar on her wedding day. And her absentee father, played by the venerable Kelsey Grammer, shows up unannounced at the ceremony. The two begin a night of heavy drinking that somehow ends with them boarding the cruise intended as her honeymoon, forcing them to address their troubled relationship.
Lauren naturally enlisted the help of her comedian hubby for a supporting role in the film.
“It’s something I've very used to,” he shared with a laugh about being directed by his wife. “So yeah. It was great! She’s a great director and it was easy, it was fun. It was exactly like all the other experiences that I’ve had working with great directors, which is it's easy and it's fun. You have confidence that they're taking what you're doing and are going to turn it into something that they want to be making.”
Lauren also spoke with ET about what she hopes viewers get out of the father-daughter tale. “I think they're going to laugh. I think they're going to cry," she said. "I think they're gonna have, hopefully, an emotional journey and, hopefully, they'll realize if they're going through something, they can also be happy and sad and feel their feelings and get to the other side of it.”
Like Father arrives on Netflix Aug. 3.
Check out the interview above.
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