Blue Ivy Carter is not only the youngest person to ever chart on the Billboard charts ⏤ she’s also a Grammy winner, a stadium tour performer, and now a movie star.
The first daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z has been revealed to be part of the cast for the upcoming The Lion King prequel/sequel Mufasa, which Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins directed. The 12-year-old is joining her mother, Donald Glover, Aaron Pierre, Seth Rogen, John Kani, Mads Mikkelsen, and more in the star-studded cast.
Part of the film is set after the events of 2019’s The Lion King photorealistic remake of the 1994 film, but instead of adapting the story of 1998’s The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, it will present a new story — Mufasa’s, told in flashbacks, and narrated by Rafiki, Timon, and Pumbaa.
Who does Blue Ivy play in Mufasa: The Lion King?
Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s teenage daughter Blue Ivy is voicing Simba and Nala’s daughter, Kiara. The flashbacks to Mufasa’s own story start when Rafiki decides to tell the lion cub about her grandfather’s journey to become king of the Pride Lands. Nala, of course, was voiced by Beyoncé in the 2019 film, with the singer reprising the role for the 2024 release.
Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he first got the idea for this mother/daughter big-screen reunion when he heard Blue Ivy’s work in the audiobook for Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love.
“I was like, ‘Is it worth a shot? Would Blue Ivy want to do it? Would Beyoncé want to act opposite her daughter? Is it too close to home?'”
It turns out the two were more than happy to jump on board. Jenkins told Good Morning America that on set, Blue Ivy was “a professional,” while Beyoncé was a “mom” before she was the legendary performer we all know her as. The director says a lot of the duo’s mother/daughter energy seamlessly “bled into the film,” and that, for the most part, they barely had to act.
At 11, Blue Ivy decided to join her mother on stage at the Renaissance World Tour, learning and performing the choreography of two songs alongside Beyoncé’s professional dance crew. One of them was “My Power” off of the The Gift album that the record-breaking musician produced as a companion piece for 2019’s The Lion King. Was that an Easter egg for Blue Ivy’s part in Mufasa this whole time? Jenkins says “not sure.”
“They are a lot smarter than me, and they have a lot more going on than me, so if they were signaling to people, all good, but it was not my intention.”
The young woman recorded her lines for Mufasa before going on tour, however. So, for Jenkins, the film acts as a “time capsule” of a “very young” Blue Ivy before she transformed into the confident performer we saw evolve and grow throughout over 15 concerts of the Renaissance Tour.
Mufasa: The Lion King arrives in theaters on December 20, 2024.
