WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — Ever wonder what the best directors say to actors to get the performance they need from them?

According to northeast Ohio native Braelyn Rankins, who voices the youngest version of the titular character in “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Barry Jenkins — whose films include the Academy Award-winning “Moonlight” and the similarly acclaimed “If Beale Street Could Talk” — kept it pretty simple, at least to start.

“I was really nervous, and he kind of let me know that they picked me for a reason,” says the 17-year-old Rankins, who grew up in Maple Heights and now calls Atlanta home, during a recent video interview.

It’s hard to blame him for being nervous. After all, he — along with Aaron Pierre, who voices the older version of Mufasa in the live-action-meets-photorealistic-animation origin story — would be inhabiting the character made famous in Disney’s 1994 animated classic by the late, great James Earl Jones, who reprised the role in the 2019 update that uses similar technology to the new film.

“James Earl Jones had such a ‘full voice,’ as I heard someone describe it, which I completely agree with, so getting to basically be him (at a much younger age), from a different perspective, has been really interesting,” he says.

Being in “Mufasa” is a “full-circle” moment for Rankins, who in his elementary-school years portrayed Mufasa’s young son, Simba — who’s the king of the Pride Lands in the new film.

“That was one of my first acting experiences,” he says. “Going from that to now being in the movie has been really cool.”

Rankins, whose credits include the Lifetime TV movie “Faith Under Fire” and the series “Doom Patrol,” says the voice work he’s done has been mainly in the world of commercials.

It involves using different muscles from when you’re standing in front of a camera.

“One of the main differences between the two is the connection with the cast,” he says. “Usually, when I was reading my lines, I was just reading back and forth with Barry.

“I (didn’t) get to connect with the cast very often. I think I had one or two sessions where I was actually reading with the people who were a part of the movie,” he adds. “That was definitely a little interesting — a bit hard to get into character at first. Not being able to have that connection to the cast like you would on a film set was a very different experience for me.”

Still, he embraced directing much of the energy of his performance into his voice.

“I really, really enjoyed it, and it really got me comfortable behind the microphone, so I hope to do some more voice work soon.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the solo work extended to recording “I Wanted a Brother,” one of a handful of songs in the movie penned by “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and featuring other cast members.

“No one had laid their vocals yet, so it was just me in the studio alone, but it was really fun,” he says. “(The song has) been stuck in my head for years. We recorded it maybe three years ago. Now that it’s finally out and a lot of people are enjoying it is really great.”

(Rankins says that while he recorded his dialogue in a studio about an hour from home, he was flown to New York to record his parts of the song, under Miranda’s supervision, in “the biggest recording studio I’ve ever seen” with “huge” elevators.)

That he was focused on a vocal performance doesn’t mean he wasn’t, well, animated during “Mufasa” recording sessions.

“They had a camera recording us as we were doing the lines, so it was interesting to see myself acting out certain scenes or even singing the songs,” he says.

As you may expect, seeing all of his work stitched together with that of others has been quite the experience.

“Oh my gosh,” Rankins says, “seeing the final product was, honestly, so magical. When I was recording, all we had were (two-dimensional) drawings — like, black-and-white, very base-level drawings of the scenes we were doing — so seeing it now and seeing how realistic it looks and how the characters emote — they actually channel some of our facial expressions into the characters, so seeing that has been really cool.

Other highlights of the “Mufasa” experience have been attending one of Disney’s D23 conventions, where he met a lot of the cast members — including Pierre and his buddy Theo Somolu, who voices the cub version of the fellow lion Taka — and the recent big premiere.

“Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to Cleveland,” he says. “I saw the other day that the Terminal Tower did a tribute for (the movie) and put my name on it, which I thought was really cool.”

His siblings Jah'Mir and Brielle also work in the worlds of acting and music.

“Usually, we’re all on set together, so they definitely support me, and I support them,” he says. “We read our auditions together. We tape our auditions together. I think that’s been really helpful overall.”

You can keep up with them on the podcast “Life With the Rankins” and follow him on various social media platforms. Expect a good bit of “Mufasa”-related content for now.

“I’m really excited for everyone to see the film,” he says. “We’ve been working on it for, like, three or four years. It’s been a long process but a really rewarding process.”

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