Halle Bailey is extremely delighted to play Ariel in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid.
The 19-year-old shared her recreated picture of Ariel on Twitter by artist Dylan Bonner.
“Dream come true…,” she captioned the image.
dream come true… ??♀️? pic.twitter.com/sndjYUS6wO
— chloe x halle (@chloexhalle) July 3, 2019
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Disney announced the cast of The Little Mermaid. Halle could be joined by Awkwafina and Jacob Tremblay.
“After an extensive search, it was abundantly clear that Halle possesses that rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance — plus a glorious singing voice — all intrinsic qualities necessary to play this iconic role,” the film’s director, Rob Marshall (Chicago), said in a statement.
After the announcement of Halle playing Ariel, Jodie Benson, the original voice of Ariel in 1989 animated classic reacted to racist Internet comments about the casting and praised Disney’s decision.
“I think the most important thing is to tell the story,” Benson said at the pop culture convention, as seen in a video on Instagram posted by user part.of.my.disney.world.
“We have, as a family, raised our children and for ourselves that we don’t see anything that’s different on the outside. I think that the spirit of a character is what really matters. What you bring to the table in a character as far as their heart and their spirit is what really counts.”
“We need to be storytellers and no matter what we look like on the outside, no matter our race, our nation, the color of our skin, our dialect, whether I’m tall or thin, whether I’m overweight or underweight, or my hair is whatever color, we really need to tell the story.”
Disney’s cable network Freeform also reacted to the racist comments with “An open letter to the Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” posted to Instagram.
“Yes. The original author of The Little Mermaid was Danish. Ariel…is a mermaid. She lives in an underwater kingdom in international waters and can legit swim wherever she wants (even though that often upsets King Triton, absolute zaddy),” the post read. “But for the sake of argument, let’s say that Ariel, too, is Danish.”
“Danish mermaids can be black because Danish *people* can be black,” the letter continued. “Ariel can sneak up to the surface at any time with her pals Scuttle and the *ahem* Jamaican crab Sebastian (sorry, Flounder!) and keep that bronze base tight. Black Danish people and this mer-folk can also *genetically* (!!!) have red hair.”