If at feels like only yesterday you were watching Aladdin in a packed theater or singing along to "A Whole New World" in a car your parent was driving, Scott Weinger can relate.
"When I was a kid, my mom would say something like, 'Oh, I haven't seen that person in 30 years,'" the now 47-year-old actor and producer, who voiced the aspiring prince in the 1992 Disney classic, exclusively told E! News. "I'm like, 'These are incomprehensible numbers! It's the age of the universe, right?'"
But don't ask a genie if he can turn you into a 9-year-old again just yet.
"Every few years, there's a new generation of kids born that get to enjoy it," Weinger said. "And I don't think I quite appreciated how important that was until I became a dad myself and my son was old enough to watch it for the first time."
Sure, it admittedly makes him feel a little old, but also, he added, "really, really lucky that I got to be a part of it."
Because as any former child actor knows, not every project becomes a cultural touchstone. And Weinger has been in two.
By the time Aladdin opened in November 1992 he was already playing D.J. Tanner's boyfriend Steve on Full House, but when he auditioned for the Disney flick in 1990—his first time reading for a cartoon—he was only 15.
"You go into the studio and they have a little music stand with your dialogue on it, and then they showed me some sketches of what they thought the character might look like," Weinger recalled. "Obviously, it was really early in the process, so they didn't know what he was going to end up looking like and ultimately they made adjustments to him based on my age and everything."
And to this day he still doesn't know how or why the part clicked for him the way it did. Call it an indescribable feeling.
"I just connected with it in a way that doesn't happen on most auditions," he explained. "I just felt like I related to this character. And it didn't require a ton. You know, I wasn't playing a shrimp or a teapot. I was playing a teenager, which I was."
Fittingly, Weinger noted, "the lesson of the movie is just be yourself. And it's funny because I think that's what helped me get the part. I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm at that age and I think it came through, in the audition and in the movie."
Little did the eventual Harvard grad, who would go on to serve as writer-producer on shows such as 90210 and Black-ish, know at the time, but he would have a whole Aladdin-shaped career, repeating the gig for numerous straight-to-video sequels and video games.
"Every time I get the call, I get a little nervous, like, 'Can I still sound that way? Can I still sound energetic?'" he told E!, sharing that he went through a period where he had anxiety about being able to pull it off. "And some weird magic happens when I go into the recording booth. I take a swig of water and all of a sudden, teenage energy comes out of me and it's really a fun thing to do. It's crazy that I still get to do it."
Even better, his wife of 14 years, writer-producer Rina Mimoun, "gets such a kick out of it," Weinger said. "She didn't realize what a big part of our life it would still be. She was like, 'I thought this was just something you did when you were a kid.' And yet somehow it comes up in one way or another every single day."
But, as much of a casting coup Weinger turned out to be for the whole Aladdin industrial complex, he would be first to agree that the 1992 original was hardly a one-man show. Well, it kinda was, but he wasn't that one man.
Robin Williams, who provided the inimitable voice of Genie and turned in an uncannily human performance for a shape-shifting blue cartoon character, was, simply, "the coolest," Weinger said of the late star, who died in 2014.
Weinger's favorite movie at 15 was Dead Poets Society (poster on his bedroom wall and everything) and Williams was "so spectacular and such an inspiration," he recalled. "When I found out that I was going to be working with him on this movie I was very nervous."
But Williams' presence "was very calming," Weinger shared. "I mean, obviously as soon as the red light was turned on and he would start performing, it was the Robin Williams that everybody remembers. But then there were these quiet moments where he was very thoughtful and contemplative. And it was so amazing to see the process, like he was getting ready to turn it on, and he really put me at ease."
In fact, when Weinger introduced himself to the veteran entertainer, saying, "I'm Scott, I play Aladdin," Williams told him, "Well, I'll be your genie."
"It was such a surreal moment," Weinger said. "I've talked about it so much and I remember it a certain way, and memories sort of change with the years, but I was very lucky that there's footage of us recording together."
Including footage of Williams cracking Weinger up so much, the teen—with his "gigantic hair, trying to look like Jim Morrison, unsuccessfully"—actually fell to the floor, rolling with laughter. A memory he wasn't even sure was real after decades had gone by.
"Then when one of the re-releases came out, there was a bonus feature on the voices where they showed behind-the-scenes footage," Weinger said. "And me falling on the floor is in the footage. I said, 'Oh, thank God it's a true story.'"
Meanwhile, he and Linda Larkin, who provided the speaking voice of Princess Jasmine (all the singing was done by Brad Kane and Lea Salonga), remain "dear friends" after all these years, Weinger shared. He credited her for getting him to start attending the occasional fan event, promising that they'd not be weird and actually really fun.
Which, Weinger said, they were—and he had actually just seen Larkin and Jonathan Freeman, the voice of Jafar, a few weeks before he got on the phone with E!. So, rest assured that Aladdin and Jasmine are "closer than ever."
Meanwhile, though Weinger certainly had his heartthrobby moment in the sun, being noticed out in public for Full House tapered off as the years went by and, he joked, he started looking "more like Steve's dad than Steve." But the resurgence of the Tanner family and assorted loved ones on Netflix's Fuller House brought it all back, he continued, and "literally overnight people started coming up to me."
The reboot ended in 2020 after five seasons, but being in touch—just as it was after Full House went off the air in 1995—"comes and goes in waves," Weinger shared. But "there's definitely a group text," and just last month John Stamos called Weinger's 13-year-old son, Misha," to wish him a happy birthday—right in the middle of the teen's party.
"The kids tried to play it cool," Weinger said, "but they were all freaking out. Uncle Jesse was on the FaceTime!"
Sadly, that pop culture family also lost a legend when Bob Saget died suddenly in January, which was "horrible for all of us," Weinger acknowledged. He "really was the glue that kept us all going out to dinner and staying in touch...So now that he's gone, all of us feel this responsibility to make sure that the family stays a family."
Saget "was at my wedding," Weinger added. "He's just been a big part of my life since I was a kid. Whenever I do anything public, like go to a convention, people bring me condolence cards. People come up to me and they burst into tears, and they say they're so sorry about Bob. And it really just brings home what a big part of people's lives he was. He was America's dad."
He admitted that he didn't fully realize just how big Saget loomed in the lives of his fans until he was gone. "There was this incredible outpouring of grief," Weinger described, "and it was like, 'Wow, the whole world seems to feel how I feel right now.' I wish he could have seen the reaction because it was so enormous. He always knew, though. He would sometimes look at me and go, 'It's incredible how famous I am.'"
Always with the jokes, that Danny Tanner.
But while Weinger—and Steve, for that matter—are all grown up now, as a star of one of the most beloved animated movies of all time, he still gets to meet a lot of wide-eyed young fans. And their parents.
"People come up to me and they say, 'I just want to tell you, Aladdin was my favorite movie I grew up watching,'" Weinger said, "and my wife is like, 'How do they know your voice?'" At the same time, he noted, "I do have plenty of people that come up to me that say, 'I just found out and my mind was blown!'"
And no, Weinger said, he "did not see this coming."
"This" being a part of two cultural entities that meant so much to so many. "I always had a sense that, as I grew up, I would move away from acting and try other things, it would just be a fun part of my childhood," he said. "But there's no getting away from it...I knew that Aladdin was on its way to being a Disney classic. But I did not know that Full House was going to have that kind of future. Both of those things have never gone away. They're probably on TV every minute of every day somewhere. I was very lucky."
And even for those who, heaven forbid, think they've outgrown Aladdin—that's where the ensuing generations have come in.
Similar to how he and his brother thought their mom used to live "in black and white," because that's what classic television looked like, Weinger explained, Misha spent part of his childhood thinking his dad grew up as "an anime living in a cartoon world."
But all became clear when Misha got to see Aladdin for the first time in 2015, when Disney threw an Arabian Nights-themed party on the studio lot to celebrate the film's "Diamond Edition" Blu-ray release.
"I couldn't in my wildest dreams have imagined introducing it to him and his friends in a more special way," Weinger recalled. "And I was the coolest dad ever for about five minutes. Whenever we do something dorky—like dorky dad stuff that we all do—[Misha] goes, 'Well, at least he's Aladdin.'"