“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.” Read Halle Bailey's 2022 Variety cover story here:
,” 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 also got important perspective from her grandparents, who shared memories of the racism and discrimination that they had endured in their lifetimes. “It was an inspiring and beautiful thing to hear their words of encouragement, telling me, ‘You don’t understand what this is doing for us, for our community, for all the little Black and brown girls who are going to see themselves in you,’” Bailey recalls.
But even teen idols grow up. The past few years have seen the Bailey sisters — who are two years apart, despite playing twins for four seasons on Freeform’s “Grown-ish” — carefully detangling their personas and forging independent artistic careers. And as Bailey carves her own path in the entertainment industry, the traits that she admired in Ariel, such as the character’s tenacious pursuit of her dreams, could prove invaluable.
Marshall first spotted Bailey on the 2019 Grammy telecast as Chloe x Halle performed “Where Is the Love?” He was enraptured by her crystalline singing voice but didn’t know if she could act. So he asked Bailey to audition for “The Little Mermaid” by singing Ariel’s signature anthem “Part of Your World.”
After landing the role, Bailey sharpened her skills with acting lessons, but therapy has been the most helpful tool. “If you have a really big emotional scene where you’re crying, you have to pull that from someplace,” she explains. “[Halle] sings that moment up an octave from the original,” Marshall says. “It’s the most chilling, and the most thrilling, film moment because it crystallizes not just her incredible vocal ability but the emotional passion she has in singing it.”
Bailey wrapped her portion of the production in late June; her final shot came at the end of a rain-soaked, late-night shoot. As Bazawule called “Cut!” and the crew applauded, producer Winfrey appeared and gave Bailey a floral tribute. “It was an emotional scene, so completing it was like, ‘Wow, I did it!’ And out of nowhere, she came at me with flowers, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh. It’s Oprah,’” Bailey says, recounting the “pinch me” moment, which she shared with glee on social media.
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