in its search for another fairytale to bring to animated life, the Disney animation team turned its attention to Aladdin. On the surface, it’s about a street urchin who finds a genie that he uses to turn him into a prince in an attempt to win the heart of the princess Jasmine. On a deeper level, though, it’s about being true to yourself and finding the magic within (don’t puke — it’s not nearly as sappy as that sounds). “You know,” points out Scott Weinger, the original voice of Aladdin, “I always knew that Aladdin was going to be this classic movie that we’d still be talking about all these years later, just because Disney has a tradition of making those kinds of movies.”
Linda Larkin, the original voice of Jasmine, observes: “It feels like no time has passed, and at the same time it feels like it’s been a part of my whole life. When it hits me is when I think about how little cousins were when the first movie came out, and they’re grown ups now. I’m, like, ‘Wow, they’re getting older. I don’t know what happened to them. I feel like I’m still a teenage princess.'”
Scott Weinger and Linda Larkin have voiced the respective characters of Aladdin and Jasmine in pretty much every form the Disney property has taken — TV series, two movie sequels, video games, etc. — beyond the Broadway show and the recent Will Smith live action film, so they have a good perspective on who these people are. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a one-trick pony, but Aladdin sort of grew up over the course of those sequels,” Scott muses. “The first one he’s an orphan on his own — or at least he thinks so. By the time you get to the third film, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, he gets married and he and Jasmine are getting ready to have a kid and everything. So I feel like he grew up a little bit. He becomes more comfortable in his role as the future Sultan of Agrabah.”
Notes Linda, “I remember reading the script and feeling immediately connected to her. And the first scene I read was in the marketplace. And she’s talking to the camel, and she meets Aladdin. She then sees a child and offers him an apple. It was just this rich and vibrant scene and she was just moving from one thing to another and really experiencing the world for the first time. And I was sort of at that stage in my life where I was just starting to experience the world for the first time through my own eyes. And I really connected to her on that level. A lot of times people ask me if I think that Jasmine was a good role model. I’ve heard the criticism that all Jasmine wanted to do was get married. Like that was her big goal in life. That’s actually not true. Jasmine was fighting against an injustice, with the marriage law of her society in her time. And she says in the movie to her father, ‘The law is wrong!’ She risks her safety and her comfort and she goes out and she finds a way to change that law. That’s a really powerful message for young girls and boys. And I’m really proud to to be associated with a princess who got to deliver that message.”
One thing that both Scott and Linda have over the successors to their roles is that they actually had the opportunity to work with Robin Williams during the recording of their Aladdin. “When I think about Aladdin,” Linda reflects warmly, “I have the experience of doing this character. Of working with great actors. Working with Robin Williams. It was never lost on me how lucky I was to be in his presence every time I was.”
“I was obsessed with Robin Williams my whole life,” Scott smiles, “because of Mork & Mindy. Even when I was a very little kid I had a Mork doll — an egg with a little Mork in it. Then by the time I got the part in Aladdin, my ultimately favorite movie at the time when I was 15 was Dead Poet’s Society, which starred Robin Williams. Walking into the room to work with the guy was intimidating, but he put me at ease very quickly. His whole demeanor was very soft spoken and very professional. Then he turned on the Robin Williams that everybody knows as soon as the tape was rolling, It was incredible. I’m very proud of myself, because it’s the kind of thing that I could see myself spinning out of control and not being present in the moment when I was working with him; just being so freaked out and intimidated and overwhelmed. But I remember it very clearly and it was a really great experience. The challenge was not laughing so hard and ruining every take.”
As noted previously, Aladdin has been enjoying a very successful Broadway run, and with all of these different versions, the real question is why the concept endures the way that it does. Muses Scott, “The appeal is the story itself about a boy finding a genie in a lamp who gave him three wishes, and all of your dreams can come true. That’s timeless. It goes back many hundreds of years before the movie itself. The movie itself is timeless, because it’s part of the family of Disney. There’s just a magical quality to these Disney animated classic. It’s funny, because watching it again recently, it doesn’t feel dated. As the movie ends and Aladdin and Jasmine are sailing off into the horizon on the magic carpet, you feel very much like, ‘Oh, this is very much in the tradition of all the great Disney animated movies going back to the 1930s.'”