My Lion King Forum

I've been wondering this ever since i saw it.

She doesn't appear because her voice actor died before the production of SP.

oh, i had no idea. i'm clueless sometimes.

If I recall correctly, despite the fact that the voice actress for Sarabi died, SP was originally going to include her anyways, and be voiced by another person. But very quickly, the SP team decided not to do so and decided to just leave Sarabi out instead of taking such a drastic step as hiring a new voice actor for the role of Sarabi. Didn't stop them from getting someone else for Zazu though...

Some people claim that Sarabi does appear a few times in SP, but never in a voiced role. While I can see how easy it would be to point at one of the low-res background lionesses in a few scenes and claim that one of them is Sarabi, other people can get quite vocal about whether or not Sarabi actually appears in SP, or so I've been told.

Fans speculate that the lioness (off to the left) that tells Kiara "My, how you've grown!" is Sarabi while others claim it is Sarafina. In fact, an archived LK website credits Zoe Leader as voicing Sarafina as being in Simba's Pride. (source) My personal take on it is it the lioness share Sarabi's eye color and have similar pelt fur, but while she's certainly built like her, the lioness lacks ear rims, and her paws are uncolored whereas Sarabi's paws are colored.

Here's a screengrab to compare by:



If you want to hear something that's more farfetched, Sarabi (or should I say Serabi) was banished by Simba along with Zira and the Outsiders:

Disney.go.com wrote:After Simba banished Zira, Scar’s sister-in-law Serabi and Scar’s other followers to the Outlands at the end of The Lion King, Zira dedicated herself to training Kovu for his historic role. In order to walk in Scar’s paw prints, he would need to defeat Simba and take over the animal kingdom.

Just mixed in with the other lionesses. She wasn't really required in the sequel as the focus was on the 'young blood'.

I always thought that she had somehow died sometime before TLK 2:SP and that's why she wasn't in it.

I agree with Mrs Depp. I always seemed to assume Zira and the outlanders killed Sarabi, but as I got older, I realised Simba probably would have killed them for that (coz nobody messes with Simba!). Now I think she died of natural causes, finally content and happy that her son was back, and there was a suitable heir to the throne.

I think a missing character in a Disney movie is their way to tell that the character is dead.