The former 'Glee' actor takes over the title role in Disney's hit Broadway musical on June 13.
Days before stepping into the title role of Disney’s Aladdin
on June 13, Broadway favorite Telly Leung is staying mum on the secrets behind
that beloved magic carpet. Mostly because he’s content to remain in the dark
himself.
“There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to know,” the actor
tells ET of the illusion that finds packed houses at the New Amsterdam Theatre gasping
night after night. “I remember seeing the show, and as somebody who’s done
plenty of Broadway and knows all the tricks, I had no idea how that worked onstage.
It really was magic -- it took my breath away.”
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Like countless kids of his generation, Leung grew up on the
1992 animated film, which joined Disney’s successful roster of Broadway musical
adaptations in 2014. “Instead of having a princess as the hero, it was cool to
have this guy as the lead, as a nontraditional Disney prince in a lot of ways,”
Leung says, comparing the movie to composer Alan Menken’s others for the
studio, including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, both
of which were also made into Broadway musicals.
Though the Brooklyn-born actor admits it may not have
registered consciously when he was young, Aladdin also holds significance as a
rare non-white lead in the crowded field of children’s stories. “This company is
filled with some of the most talented people of color on Broadway, ever,” Leung
says. “I happen to be a Chinese-American Aladdin. Adam Jacobs who I followed is
mixed-race, there’s a Filipino Aladdin, there’s a Middle Eastern Aladdin; it’s
very ethnically diverse.” (Check out ET’s exclusive first look at the actor in
character below:)
That the residents of Agrabah seem to hail from all over is
a conscious choice by the musical’s creative team, Leung says, including
director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who also helmed The Book of
Mormon. “They took that artistic license to say we’re living in the age of Hamilton,
we’re living in 2017; audiences want to see a world onstage that reflects the
world outside that theater too, which is diverse and beautiful.”
Leung’s other recent leading roles on Broadway have also
shone a spotlight on issues of visibility. Earlier this year, the actor starred
in Frozen composer Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s a capella musical In
Transit, as a gay New Yorker encouraging his fiancé to finally come out to
his own family. Last season he appeared opposite George Takei in Allegiance,
a fictionalized account of the Star Trek actor’s own experience with Japanese-American
internment camps during WWII.
The moral at the heart of Aladdin seems to resonate
through each of these stories and beyond, and is one reason Leung points to in
explaining its timeless appeal. “Aladdin has to learn that his own worth is not
something that’s material, it’s not something that’s outside of him, it’s
something that’s inside of him,” the actor says of his character’s emotional
journey on the way to capturing Princess Jasmine’s heart. “Your worth is not
the clothes you wear, your worth is not the big house you live in, or how much
money you have in the bank. It’s something deeper than that.”