NEED TO KNOW
- Susan Egan jokes that her dating life “primed” her to play Meg in Hercules
- Talking to PEOPLE at World Princess Week, the actress and singer reflected on her time playing different Disney characters, including Belle from Beauty and the Beast on Broadway
- She shares that Belle and Meg are “so opposite”
She won’t say she’s in love, but Susan Egan will say how much she loves her Disney characters.
While attending the World Princess Week Celebration on Tuesday, Aug. 26, Egan spoke to PEOPLE about the difference between voicing Megara ‘Meg’ in Hercules and playing Belle in the Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast — and revealed which character she felt “primed” to play.
“I was cast as Meg when I was still playing Belle on Broadway in the production of Beauty and the Beast and those characters are so opposite,” the actress, 55, says. “Belle is so kindhearted, generous, saves her father’s life. Meg is jaded and sarcastic.”
In the 1997 film, it’s revealed that Meg sold her soul to Hades to save her boyfriend, who eventually left her for another woman.
“When the movie came out, my friends who saw the movie said, ‘It’s the first time you played a character where we recognized you in the role,'” she recalls. “Belle was when I was acting, Meg is right where I live.”
Egan jokes that it’s like she was “primed to play that character” after her own “series of bad boyfriends.”
“She was great. What I loved about Meg was that she always had the perfect comeback and the perfect moment in real life,” she adds. “I wish I could think of those things in the moment, but Meg always had the perfect line.”
World Princess Week is an annual event at the Disneyland Resort, which celebrates the company’s iconic princesses. Egan cohosted an event during the celebration with Ginnifer Goodwin, who played Snow White in Once Upon A Time.
The Little Mermaid actress Jodi Benson, The Princess and the Frog‘s Anika Noni Rose, Moana star Auli’i Cravalho and Beauty and the Beast actress Paige O’Hara were also present. During the event, the iconic princesses each performed a song associated with their characters — Ariel, Tiana, Moana and Belle, respectively.
However, Egan reveals that Meg’s iconic song “I Won’t Say (I’m In Love)” wasn’t the first option written for her.
“She had this soaring ballad, a very Alan Menken Little Mermaid-y kind of soaring ballad. We recorded it. They started animating to it and it wasn’t working,” she shares, “and we figured out why, because it was a great song.”
“Ken Duncan, the animator for Meg, said, ‘You know, Meg would never in a million years sing a soaring ballad,’ and Alan said, ‘100%,'” she recalls. “[He] went home that night, wrote a new song and it was a song about denial. It’s a love song about denial and I love that about it. I love it. It’s a duet between Meg and the Muses and it’s an argument that the muses win.”
In addition to Egan, the Hercules cast included Danny DeVito, James Woods, Tate Donovan, Roger Bart, Jim Cummings and Keith David. It is available to stream on Disney+.
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