Imagine a young James Earl Jones, Darth Vader himself, if he was from south London. That’s how smooth and chill Aaron Pierre, 30-year-old actor and star of Netflix hit Rebel Ridge, sounds when he fixes you with his sea-green eyes and tells you how his day’s been going: “I’m still working myself out, you know? Still learning, still growing …” That voice, in combination with those eyes, commands an audience’s attention, even in relatively small roles. Such as when he played Cassio in a 2018 production of Othello at south London’s Globe; or a man escaping slavery alongside Thuso Mbedu in Prime Video’s 2021 Golden Globe-winning series The Underground Railroad.
The voice-eyes combo also marks Pierre out as a natural heir to Earl Jones, the veteran actor whose seven-decade career included the original Star Wars movies, as well as voicing Simba’s stern-but-loving father Mufasa in the animated Lion King movie back in 1994. It’s a role that Pierre will step into when the latest instalment in the franchise, a prequel to the photorealistic 2019 remake of the Disney classic, comes out later this month.
