Next Big Thing: ‘Little Mermaid’ Star Jonah Hauer-King on Beating Out Harry Styles and Standing Up for Halle Bailey
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Jonah Hauer-King, who plays Prince Eric in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid, went through three months of rehearsals for the part, which included learning to ride horses, work with dogs, scuba dive, row and operate a horse carriage. “I’ve never done so much training in my life,” says the 27-year-old London native, whose credits include 2019’s A Dog’s Way Home and the BBC drama World on Fire.
Hauer-King first tried out for The Little Mermaid as a “fun experience,” thinking it would never go anywhere. Seven months of auditions ensued, which included an Ariel-esque moment of losing his voice the day before he was asked to sing in front of director Rob Marshall (he met with Marshall a few weeks later to try again). The actor also screen-tested alongside star Halle Bailey, eventually landing a role that Harry Styles also was up for (“He’s pretty cool and amazingly talented, so yeah, it was cool to be mentioned in the same breath,” he says of Styles).
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Hauer-King — who performs a new solo song in the film written for the character by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda — had limited previous musical experience; he’d been in an indie rock band in his teens and starred in Rent while at Cambridge.
“We were both experiencing something very new, doing a film like this,” he says of himself and Bailey, noting that “she obviously had vast experience in the music world, much more than I did, and I’ve probably done a few more acting gigs than she had, but in terms of doing a film like this, there was nothing that really could have prepared us.” The two became fast friends — in fact, when Hauer-King first arrived in Los Angeles for the Little Mermaid press tour, he went straight to meet up with Bailey to see her sister Chloe in concert.
That close bond has made it difficult to witness the racist backlash Bailey has received for playing Ariel, as Hauer-King admits he does “not really understand what to make of it.”
“Rob and the producers and Disney didn’t approach this film and this casting with any kind of agenda, they just wanted to cast the person who was best for the role,” he continues. “Ultimately, you want someone who has the best voice and the best spirit and the most charisma, charm and humor and best acting talent, and that’s Halle.”
Prince Eric and Ariel have a “more grown-up and mature” relationship in this film than the original, adds Hauer-King, while also seeing some of their iconic material updated: Menken has spoken about changing some of the “Kiss the Girl” lyrics so it wouldn’t seem that Eric was forcing himself on Ariel.
Though he wasn’t part of those conversations, the actor says, “My understanding is that there were some feelings around consent and asking to kiss someone, which makes total sense to me.”
Next up, Hauer-King has a major pivot as the star of the Peacock/Sky Holocaust drama series The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which required him to lose a significant amount of weight and shave his head. Says the actor of where he hopes his career continues taking him, “Anything that feels different and having variety is what I am looking for.”
This story first appeared in the May 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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