A self-identified “90s Disney kid,” Kara Carneal remembers watching “Aladdin” for the first time when her parents bought it on VHS. While she liked much of the storyline, Carneal says she just couldn’t handle Jafar.
“That was my first time ever experiencing fear,” she laughs in an interview with TODAY.com. “I remember being so scared of him. I only ever watched the movie one time.”
“Aladdin” terrified her so much she slept in her parents’ bedroom for years. Decades later, turns out she’s still afraid. Carneal went viral last year when her friend, Kyle Phillipi, pranked her while wearing a Jafar costume under the pretense of “immersion therapy.”
“I never thought that it would come back to haunt me in such a way,” Carneal laughs.
Philippi, speaking to TODAY.com, says a mutual friend tipped him off to her fear. “One of her closer friends says, ‘Well, you know, Kara has that fear of Jafar,’” Philippi tells TODAY.com. “And I was like, ‘Sorry, what?!’”
And so, the idea for the prank was born. Carneal and Philippi’s mutual friend bought the costume, then Philippi burst into her apartment in full Jafar gear, speaking to her in a commanding voice. The resulting video, which features Carneal simultaneously terrified and laughing, went viral on TikTok in November 2023.
“Broke into my friend’s apartment once I found out that she has an irrational fear of Jafar,” the caption says.
The prank got such a spirited reaction from Carneal (and Philippi’s internet followers) that he decided to do a follow up. For the second take, Philippi enlisted the help of the original Jafar voice actor, Jonathan Freeman, who recorded a message for Carneal.
Philippi booked Freeman through Cameo, an app where people can purchase personalized videos from celebrities. “He nailed it, and I just practiced over and over again to lip sync it,” Philippi says.
The second Jafar prank unfolded on a night Philippi and his wife invited Carneal and her husband over for dinner. When dinner was over, Philippi put on the Jafar costume and turned on the smoke machines.
“Hello… Princess Kara,” Freeman’s voiceover says. “You’ve grown so much since you were last a little girl running around the palace.” In the video, as the Jafar-costume clad Philippi lip-syncs along, Carneal screams and laughs into a pillow on the couch.
“Kyle is so extra. He does everything to the millionth degree,” Carneal says. “So the fact that he hired the actual voice actor… just absolutely sent me. I hadn’t heard that voice since I was little, and then to hear him actually saying my name?”
Freeman, in an interview with TODAY.com, says he’s used to inspiring fear. After the original movie, the actor went on to play Jafar in countless sequels, TV shows, video games and on Broadway. He says sometimes children would cry when his Jafar would appear on the Broadway stage.
“I felt like, ‘Well, I guess I’m doing my job,’” he says.
After watching the viral video, Freeman concludes that Philippi’s lip-sync to his voiceover was “really a production.”
“It was very elaborate,” he chuckles. “Nice, crazy people but crazy.”
Carneal says she’s not mad her “nice, crazy” friends keep trying to scare her fear of Jafar out of her. Philippi’s first video came at a moment when Carneal really needed a laugh: her father had just died.
“It really gave me a reason to laugh, actually laugh, for the first time in so long,” she says. “And it gave me a distraction. How could I be mad?”
Since Philippi still has the costume, she’s always going to be slightly on alert.
