People are saying Beyoncé is behind Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel in ‘The Little Mermaid’
The world is still reacting to the news that Halle Bailey is officially going to play Ariel in the live-action remake of Disney’s classic animation, The Little Mermaid.
And some fans can’t help but wonder if superstar Beyoncé might have had a little something to do with opening the door for Halle, 19, to get this life-changing opportunity.
Beyoncé’s protege Halle Bailey has been cast as Ariel
As we all know, Beyoncé will be the voice of Nala in the upcoming live-action release of The Lion King, so she’s totally been having a few chats with some important people working at Disney. So, it wouldn’t be crazy to think she might have had a few suggestions for them when she heard they were looking to cast a lead for The Little Mermaid.
For those who don’t know, Halle and her sister Chloe shot to stardom after they were discovered by Beyoncé on YouTube, who then signed them up to her Parkwood Entertainment record label. And one Twitter user had some fun trying to imagine how things might have gone down if Beyoncé did use her power to give her artists a chance to shine on one of the biggest film projects in the coming years.
‘beyonce @ Disney HQ: now before i sign on for nala i want y’all to take a look at my recommendations for the rest of your lil movies,’ she wrote.
‘the parkwood-disney industrial complex is in full swing. get on board or get left behind’, she added.
Beyoncé plays Nala in the new live-action animation of The Lion King
Director Rob Marshall has spent the past couple of months meeting potential stars, but insiders say that Halle had been a frontrunner from the start. ‘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,’ Rob said in a statement.
This will be the singer’s feature film debut, and will hopefully be the start of even better things for Chloe X Halle. Halle will be joining Jacob Tremblay and Awkwafina, who have already been cast. It was previously reported that Melissa McCarthy is in talks to play the role of Ursula, the film’s sea witch villain.
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10 Comments
Black Dynasty
July 07, 06:41If it’s true, then excellent. When you’re blessed, you have a responsibility to pass it on and open the door for others.
Mandy
July 07, 07:34It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. I mean, her Vogue spread last year is proof that Beyonce is a superstar dedicated to opening doors for the black community.
But Queen Bey, could you make a statement for us LGBT fans of yours? Just one loud gay anthem, pretty please. ??? We Beyhivers refuse to stick with the one Taylor Swift has packaged for us.
Sage philip
July 07, 08:08Congrats Halle. But i am still of the opinion that if disney was desperately looking for a black disney princess, they should just create one other than just giving us a makeshift princess in life remake for that matter. WTF! Dont even get me started on Jasmine they ended up white brainwashing and besides she is Arabian. Or Moana who is not even a classic disney princess.
Pink Panther
July 07, 09:16I’m sorry, they whitewashed Jasmine??? How?
Sage Philip
July 07, 11:48Lets start with the life remake of the movie. Jasmines skin colour is dark brown. Infact to call her skin tone caramel is an overstatement so how the hell did naomi scott become the best cast, her skin tone is enough disqualification. Jasmine was never british with little traces of majarati.
in the cartoon, the real location was changed from bangladash to agrabah(a fictional place not in the middle east),cos the gulf war was going on then.
in the ongoing remake of mulan, disney created a team to help source a cast with everything mulan, why didnt they do that with alladin other than trying to cast white actors after browning them up for a middle eastern based story still the tanning no work. Now they are saying ariel is a conpensation for jasmine like we told them to cast a white girl as jasmine.
MagDiva
July 07, 11:15I’m a bit on the fence on this one. As much I’m “glad”; for the 100th time race swapping or gender swapping a main character is not progress and is usually down to lazy writing and only serves as a way for Hollywood to pat them selves on the back for being woke or inclusive.
But the truth is that they are too lazy or cant be bothered to actually write a good story with black or female characters nor do they give black/ female creators a chance to, yet want those demographics to buy in to their movies and keep feeding us these character swapping roles to distract us / shut us up.
My hope is that one day young black kids would be arguing about who will play Luther and not which black person will play Bond. #peace
Yazz
July 07, 22:31If I had a coin for everytime Hollywood swapped a ginger in a comics for a black person
Heimdall in thorr
Iris west and the West’s in the flash
Red in Shawshank redemption
Mary Jane recasted as Zendaya
And more and more
Can’t they just create new roles
And let the poor freckled ginger children have some representation also..
E
July 08, 00:36Y’all need to chill. Most of these comments sound confused and/or bitter. The girl is in Grown-ish, and may well have auditioned and gotten the role; she’s a good actress and has a beautiful voice, which will be important for this role. And redheads have a lot or representation (Sansa, Scarlet Witch, MJ was still a redhead, and so on), swapping the race when remaking things from a time when every main character was white is literally what progress looks like. Making new roles is great and is happening, but this is good too. And Beyonce and Jay-Z did quite a bit bts for Frank Ocean, so you’ve gotten at least one gay assist. The Jasmine thing is arguably a step back, but at least they didn’t straight up change her to white. I’m just going to say it now before some headstrong contrarian tries to form clever by tackling me, I’m not saying casting white people is bad, just that casting more people of other races is a step towards correcting a long history of erasure.
Finally, this isn’t Halle’s first feature film debut. She was, though uncredited, in The Fighting Temptations with Beyonce and Cuba Gooding Jr, which raises the question of how long Beyonce has actually known her lol.
Tristan
July 08, 13:02Wait, what? Halle was in Fighting temptations? What character did she play?
Blessing Oluwatayo
July 08, 05:22You’re lovely and kind in heart.
Almighty God will bless you