The New Little Mermaid: How Halle Bailey Found Her Voice and Defied Haters by Creating Her Own Ariel

variety.com:

Halle Bailey was obsessed with “The Little Mermaid,” wearing out her family’s VHS tape watching and rewatching the 1989 Disney animated hit and pretending to be Ariel every time she went swimming. “Her sense of longing, her searching for herself, was something that I could resonate with,” Bailey says. “She knew where she wanted to go, and she wasn’t going to let anybody stop her.”Bailey can relate.

Now, it will fall on her 22-year-old shoulders to bring Ariel’s quest for true love and independence to life on-screen for a new generation of movie fans.

Four years ago, Bailey, best known as one-half of the Grammy-nominated duo Chloe x Halle, landed the title role in the live-action remake of the classic film — which has wrapped shooting and will open in theaters in May 2023.

Before Bailey’s casting, only one other Black actor had been crowned a Disney princess (Anika Noni Rose as the voice of Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog”), so she understands the barrier-breaking importance of donning Ariel’s fins. “I want the little girl in me and the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they’re special, and that they should be a princess in every single way,” Bailey says. “There’s no reason that they shouldn’t be.