“The Little Mermaid” Is One Of The Most Talked About Movies Right Now — Here Are 19 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets You Probably Didn’t Know
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1.Halle Bailey was actually the first person to audition for Ariel, and director Rob Marshall said that he knew she was the perfect fit before she even came into the room.
He told IMDb, "[The Little Mermaid producer] John DeLuca and myself were watching the Grammys, and Chloe x Halle started to sing 'Where is the Love,' a beautiful song. And I turned to John… I said, wait, is that Ariel?! She’s so ethereal, sort of otherworldly with that angelic voice. She had just a presence. I thought we had to see her…so she came to NY just a few weeks later and auditioned for us. She walked in. I said, would you like to sing or read first? She goes, I’d like to sing first. She sang 'Part of Your World,' and by the end of the song, I was completely in tears."
2.Jonah Hauer-King's audition process to play Prince Eric lasted seven months. He sent in numerous self tapes of him playing Eric in different accents, sang several songs (including some from West Side Story, Rent, and ones written by Amy Winehouse), and went to an in-person screen test with Halle.
3.The locs and extensions that Halle wore in the movie cost over $150,000. The wrap process also "took 12 to 14 hours" which is a technique where they took the fake hair and wrapped it around Halle's natural hair, so she wouldn't have to color it or "change her internal hair structure."
4.Back in the '90s, one of Melissa McCarthy's first jobs was doing stand-up comedy in drag. She drew inspiration from her own experiences and other drag queens' performances (namely Divine) to portray Ursula.
She told Willie Geist, "I am a huge fan of drag, I always have been. There's a bravado to it and a self deprecation to it. It's the perfect mix of 'having full and utter confidence' and also 'there's some damage there and it's a cover.' And I think in all the characters I kinda fall in love with, that quality of what's done because of real confidence or what's done to cover is...that's exactly the gray area that makes me usually take a part."
5.One of the moments the remake recreates is Ariel's iconic hair flip moment. Halle said that it took about 20 tries to get the moment as close to perfect as possible.
Halle explained that when her locs get wet, they become "really, really heavy." She added, "It was just a lot of hair on my head. So, whenever I would get in the water, it would be heavy. So, that one scene, it was really funny: That whole day we were trying to get it right, get it right, and finally, they got a take that they really liked."
6.In fact, part of Halle's, and several of the other mermaids', training included weight lifting to strengthen her necks.
7.Javier Bardem explained that he didn't even wear his merman tail much on set. The tails were worn to help him visualize his spacial awareness, but otherwise, he just wore pants while filming.
He told the Hollywood Reporter, "Sometimes, we would wear the tail to see the distance that you had...because that would help understand the distance between each other."
8.To film the "Under the Sea" scene, several dancers and puppeteers needed to wear blue screen suits and were then edited in post-production to appear as various sea creatures.
Director Rob Marshall explained, “I remembered that Walt Disney had worked with the Ballet Russes when he was creating Fantasia [for The Nutcracker suite], so his artists would have some forms to work with, some dancers to work with. So, we brought the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater over to London to work with our VFX artists. And we had this beautiful company of dancers literally replicate how [each sea creature] moved so that we could use that as templates for our artists to create this massive production.”
9.Jacob Tremblay was 13 years old when he first recorded his lines for Flounder and is currently 16 years old at the time of the movie's release.
Because of COVID-19 restrictions and the majority of the film being CGI, it took much longer than usual to get the movie released.
Jacob said, “My voice has changed so much since then, so it was far easier to hit those high notes. If I were ever to revisit [the movie], I don’t think I could ever do nearly as good of a job as I did, because like everyone can tell, I’ve grown.”
10.Daveed Diggs, who voices Sebastian, explained that the voice cast rehearsed together for a month "before any cameras began filming." This gave them a chance to actually bond as cast mates, build chemistry, improvise, and riff off of each other.
"We rehearsed it, built it like a play — all of the voice actors were rehearsing with the people that would eventually play the puppets in the real scenes. ... Then, when we recorded, all of us were together. Me, Awkwafina [who voices Scuttle], and Jacob were all on a stage together, anyone else in the scene was also in the room, so we got to really play the scene and improvise."
11.However, when it came time for Halle to physically film with Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle, she was by herself with the puppeteers and a recording of Daveed, Jacob, and Awkwafina's voices. Sometimes, a tennis ball or smaller puppet was brought in as a placeholder for its respective character.
Awkwafina shared, "[Halle] said it felt like we were there, because she was constantly listening to us all day."
12.A majority of the film was comprised of shots actually filmed inside a water tank.
Rob Marshall explained, "[Filming] underwater was so complicated, but our goal was never to let you see the machinery behind it all because sometimes, there would be… In 'Part of Your World,' Halle would sing two lines, and we'd say, 'Cut,' and then she'd be back on another piece of equipment or apparatus. It was all choreographed in advance. But then, it was so complicated to think, 'How do we do an underwater musical, really?' It's never been done before. So, that was the goal, to make sure the audience doesn't see any of that."
13.Jonah nearly drowned while shooting the movie because he's not the best swimmer and had to wear a heavy pair of boots that weighed him down while he was in the water. The crew had to poke holes in his boots so that they wouldn't fill up with water.
He told Seventeen, "I just can't get the floating aspect, some people seem to do that really easily, that comes naturally to them. I just sink to the bottom."
14.Jonah was put on a "standard bodybuilding program" before filming began, and after months of training, Rob Marshall had said Jonah had gotten too muscular for the role.
"It was a standard bodybuilding program, so we would do, for example, back and biceps, chest and triceps. We would focus solely on getting a little bit of strength, a little bit of size into his body," Sana Shirvani, Jonah's trainer, explained. "We got him to that point, and then obviously, if he continued training in that capacity, he was only going to get bigger and bigger. I remember the director coming up to me and saying, 'We are not after the Incredible Hulk, we want a strong sailor boy.'"
15.Ariel's new song "For the First Time," was actually inspired by the score from the original animated movie, created by Alan Menken.
He was riffing on "Tour of The Kingdom," and Lin-Manuel Miranda suggested he slow it down and add a "dancehall beat" underneath — which gave the tune a "Caribbean-island vibe."
16.Lin-Manuel Miranda actually went to school with Alan Menken's niece and was obsessed with The Little Mermaid at the time so he'd ask for Alan's autograph. Years later, Alan re-met Lin as an adult and collaborated on new songs for The Little Mermaid remake.
Together, they worked on "Wild Uncharted Waters," "For the First Time," and "The Scuttlebutt."
17.Jodi Benson, the original actor to voice Ariel in the animated movie, had to keep her cameo a secret for four years — she couldn't even tell her family.
She said that when the movie finally got greenlit, she reached out to her longtime friends Rob Marshall and John DeLuca and congratulated them. They immediately responded with "You are going to be part of this."
18.Jodi's cameo is only a few seconds long, but it ended up taking about a month to film because of COVID-19 restrictions and a storm that nearly destroyed the set.
"As soon as I finished my quarantine, I could go and watch,” she said. “To see it come through Rob and John’s eyes of how they envisioned it, paying tribute to the original but then just expanding it, was just glorious. I was blown away.”
19.Finally, Simone Ashley, who plays Ariel's sister Indira, seemingly got the call she was cast in Bridgerton while she was on set filming The Little Mermaid.
Last year, she told Jimmy Kimmel, "I was on a movie at the time, and I was in my trailer, and I got the call saying, 'It's kind of secret, you can't tell anyone. But you've got the role.'"
At the time, she couldn't name what movie set she'd been working on but explained that she got the news after Bridgerton's first season came out, which was December 2020, and The Little Mermaid began filming January 2021.
