(traffic rumbling)
- Okay, see you in a minute.
- [Woman] See ya!
- Hello.
I'm Jonathan Freeman, and I play Jafar
in "Aladdin" on Broadway.
(music)
I voiced Jafar for the 1992 animated feature of "Aladdin",
and now I'm doing it on Broadway, after all these years.
My whole life, and this is no lie,
I wanted to play a Disney villain,
since I was, really, a kid.
The really big ones, of operatic scale, like,
well, Captain Hook, Maleficent, Stromboli,
I just liked them all.
Lady Tremaine, you know, didn't matter, men, women,
they were all interesting to me because,
without a good villain, you don't really have a good story.
The first time I read the script I was like,
"This is not called "Aladdin", it's called Jafar."
This is where the fun begins.
It's about a megalomaniac who wants to,
you know, basically take over the world.
(laughing) Who knew there really would be
such people in the world,
and not just cartoon characters, you know?
He's just, I think, pure evil.
It's not at all like who I really think I am,
but it's so appealing to get to play it,
it's so much fun.
As I said to Cheryl Thomas,
who is the makeup artist on the show, I said,
"You know, as I sit here every night at my beauty station,
"gazing into the mirror, watching you spackle my face,
"I think to myself, if I do this for too many more years,
"I won't have to wear makeup."
Some days, when I fell like so like, tired and hangdog,
that after she puts the makeup on, I look better.
(laughs) I think that the Jafar face is better than
the Freeman face sometimes.
And then I move out of the makeup chair,
and I move to the hair chair.
Hi, Rich.
- [Rich] Hi, Freeman.
How are you?
- I'm fine.
- Good. - Ready for more fun.
- Yeah, as always.
(gentle music)
- [Jonathan] I get a beard put on.
(gentle music)
And I get my mics put into my head.
Then I move back to my room.
(gentle music)
And I meet my dresser there, and we start assembling us,
I always say us, me and Jafar,
just, we start assembling us piece by piece,
and my dressing room is very calm.
I like to be quiet and thoughtful
about what's about to happen,
which is, you know, 2 1/2 hours of craziness and mayhem.
It's just about focusing, especially after six years,
it's just about focusing and remembering
what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
It's been a very interesting journey
spending 28 years with this imaginary character.
What keeps me going
is knowing that there's somebody in the audience
that has never been to a Broadway show before.
There's someone in the audience didn't have a lot of money
and they really wanted to go,
so they saved up money over time.
There's somebody in the audience
there for a special occasion,
or there's somebody there
because there's some problem in their life
that they just want to escape,
so I try to remind myself
that my responsibility to the audience has not gone away.
At a certain point, I look in the mirror and I think,
"Okay, that's good, we've done it."
(gentle music)