Interview: Fred Berman and Ben Jeffrey Roar About 15 Years as Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King

Fred Berman and Ben Jeffrey met, as most meerkat-and-warthog pairings do, not at the zoo, not in the savanna, but in a rehearsal room for the Broadway production of The Lion King.

Berman, an established New York actor and voiceover artist, had been cast as Timon; Jeffrey, meanwhile, landed Pumbaa pretty much fresh off the bus — The Lion King was basically his first-ever professional audition. Both were thrilled, not only for the rare promise of job security, but the fact that the creative team behind Disney’s flagship Broadway musical wanted them to build these characters anew, without following in the well-trod paw-prints of their predecessors.

Berman, operating with the mindset of the itinerant actor, figured he’d do a year at the Minskoff, maybe two. That was back in 2010. He and Jeffrey are still screaming at buzzards 15 years later — and still having the time of their life.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Take me back 15 years. Did you two audition together or were you brought together by the circumstances?
Ben Jeffrey: We auditioned at the same time but didn’t even talk to each other.

Fred Berman: I remember you leaving. I was like, “Who’s that big, bearded guy?”

Ben: I haven’t been able to have a beard for 15 years. We were both there on the same day, we never read together, I worked with all these strangers, and then I was called for the first rehearsal, and I couldn’t pick Fred out of a lineup.

Fred: You weren’t aware of my pedigree before then?

Ben: I literally didn’t know a thing about you until the first day of rehearsal. And then, obviously, we fell madly in love with each other.

Fred: Day one, yeah.

Was The Lion King one of those shows where you auditioned for it for years until you got it?
Fred: I auditioned for it when it first opened. Max Casella, who created the role of Timon, left, and they brought up Danny Rutigliano, who was the understudy at the time, so I went in to replace that position. I read for Timon and they’re like “Would you read for Pumbaa, as well?” My Pumbaa was totally a bad Al Pacino. And that was it. That was 13 years before I got the call in 2010.

Ben: Jeeze, that makes it seem like a very long time ago.

Fred: It was.

Ben: I moved to New York in November 2009, and I started auditioning in February. I tell young people that I am unusually fortunate in this circumstance. Fred already had a career. I, literally, had never booked a professional gig in my life.

I show up at the final callback and God and everyone is there. There’s 25 people behind the table. It’s Julie Taymor and all the associates, and I’m there with a bunch of people who have done the show for a long time in different places around the world. I think I was the youngest person there, because I was a baby when I booked the show. I was like 26.

Fifteen years, as we said, is a long time.
Fred: I did a show off-Broadway years ago with this wonderful actor, Raymond Thorne, who was the original FDR in Annie. He did it for five years. I was in my mid-20s at the time. When I heard that he had done the show for five years, I was like “Are you insane? How did you do that?” And he’s like, “I had kids and it was a good job.” There are certain times in your life when you can’t even picture it. When I got The Lion King, I had two kids, and I was like “Let’s do it.”

And you also have—or at least I did—preconceived notions about what working at a long-running Disney show was going to be like. I thought it was gonna be a machine and they’re gonna say “Say the line like this, stand here, this is where you get the laugh.” At that point, with kids and a mortgage, I thought, “Well, I’ll smile and take the experience.” The impression I had was completely wrong. We showed up and they basically rehearsed us like we were rehearsing a new show.

Ben: They kind of discouraged us from even watching our predecessors, Tom Robbins and Danny Rutigliano, who are two of the best actors on Broadway, because they didn’t want us to just do what had been done. If we had to sort of rubber-stamp everything, I don’t know if my soul would have been able to do it for this long. Even though a steady job as an actor is a very rare thing and we are extremely fortunate for this, I might’ve gone a little bit insane. Even still, they continue to come in and try something new just to keep it fresh.

I was going to say, how do all of this for the thousandth time and manage to find something new in “Hakuna Matata,” if you know what I mean?
Fred: and I have a lot of pride in what we do.  You go into every show wanting to do a good job, so that’s always there. How do we do that after so many times? A lot of it is the basics of acting: listening and being open and being willing to play. It’s not just listening to the other actors—obviously that’s super important—but it’s a different audience from night to night. Every night, there’s a different energy in the theater. For nine out of 10 people, this is their first Broadway experience, and that’s a real honor. Even when you show up and you’re tired or had a crappy day, the synapses go “No, this is important.”

Ben: People save for years to come to New York with their whole family and stay in a tiny hotel room and eat overpriced food in Times Square and see one, or if they’re very lucky, two Broadway shows. Understanding that we have a responsibility to people who are taking this time and money and coming to watch us tell a story gives you fuel.

After all these years, you’re bound to have encountered Elton John at least once, which is more than people like me can say. So, tell me about your Elton John encounter.
Ben: He came to the 20^th anniversary performance in 2017 and he performed “Circle of Life” at the end. He’s playing and we’re singing with him, even though no one really cared that we were there because it’s Elton John. He’s taking a bow, and we’re all standing there taking a bow with him, like we matter, and he turns around, points at me, and mouths Pumbaa! That’s it. I can die happy.

Fred: I think right after that, he came by and touched my Timon puppet. I was like, “Wow.” You hear “Elton John’s coming!” and it’s something you can’t wrap your head around. And then you turn around and you see him standing next to you, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, it’s Elton John!”

In 15 years, have you ever been able to watch the show?
Ben: Yeah. It doesn’t happen all that often, but every few years, we’re swung out. I’ll still get choked up during “Circle of Life.” For my money, there’s no better five minutes of Broadway. It is an incredible thing. It’s great when we get swung out to watch it because it does remind you that this is what we get to be part of eight times a week, and how moving it is for so many people. That’s the juice, you know what I mean? That’s why you get into this stuff. And it’s the best.