Halle Bailey is looking back on Ariel with a steadier view three years after Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid hit theaters. Speaking during the press tour for You, Me & Tuscany, Bailey said the role was “a beautiful experience” that taught her to trust herself and shut out the noise.
“How do I explain it…” Bailey said when asked about the experience. “The Little Mermaid was ‘a beautiful experience for me — and I feel like it taught me to listen to myself and the good voices inside. I learned how to block out the noise.’”
That distance mattered because the casting of a Black actor as Ariel drew a wave of racist backlash online, including the #NotMyAriel hashtag on X. Bailey said the reaction was easier to absorb because she was already used to expecting it. Before the film opened in May 2023, she told The Face that as a Black person you just expect that kind of response and that “it’s not really a shock anymore.” She also said she was at the D23 Expo when the teaser came out and did not see any of the negativity herself.
Bailey said the most important buffer was her family. When the backlash started to spread, she said relatives helped her drown it out, and her grandparents talked to her about the racism and discrimination they had lived through. Those conversations, she said, made clear that she did not fully understand what the role was doing for her community and for younger viewers. “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,” she recalled being told.
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The comments also echoed something Rob Marshall said later about the casting process. The director said there was no agenda behind choosing Ariel and that his team auditioned every ethnicity before landing on Bailey. “We just were looking for the best actor for the role, period. The end,” he said. “We saw everybody and every ethnicity.”
Bailey said the whole period was strangely liberating. “It was actually freeing to be in the middle of this conversation where so many different opinions were coming in, and they were so opposite from one another… I felt like I was watching myself inside a cup, seeing how people react to it…” she said. “Growing up in the industry can really develop your sense of self, and for me, it keeps me grounded in a way. I know for some people it’s the opposite but I just always think to myself, ‘None of this is real.’”
That sense of perspective still shapes how she moves through Hollywood. Bailey said she often goes into nature to stay levelheaded, because it helps her remember how small she is in a much larger world. “I love feeling small, realizing that the world is so big and beautiful and I’m just a tiny, tiny part of it,” she said. “The fact I’m here is a blessing, and I’m grateful [to be doing music and acting], but at the same time, this is not what matters in life. What matters is keeping our feet on the ground, and holding the people we love.”
For Bailey, the backlash that once dominated the conversation now sits beside a different lesson: the role mattered far beyond the noise around it. What she is left with is not the anger, but the knowledge that Ariel gave many Black and brown girls a version of themselves they had not seen before.
