Nala (The Lion King) accompanying her and her best friend Simba on their adventures. Pronounced "me too", the character's name is a reference to this personality trait. Simba was intended to save the cub from a wildebeest stampede, and Nala would eventually become responsible for protecting Mheetu from Simba's tyrannical uncle Scar. Nala also had a fox friend named Bhati. According to Woolverton, Mheetu and Bhati were eventually written out of the film because their stories were beginning to distract from Simba's, in addition to the Mheetu-Scar subplot making the film too dark when combined with the death of Simba's father Mufasa. At one
Nala (The Lion King) mind. However, John lobbied in favor of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" being a love song performed as a duet by Nala and Simba, with which the filmmakers ultimately agreed. When asked by Disney if she was interested in reprising her role as Nala in "The Lion King II: Simba's Pride", Kelly immediately accepted, joking, "Sure, you wanna do a third, fourth, fifth? I'm right there". In the case of "The Lion King "1½, it took the actress only a few days to record her character's dialogue due to Nala's comparatively smaller role in the film; much of Nala's