Halle Bailey’s portrayal of Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” movie was recently shared in a sneak peek trailer online, and she is already winning the hearts of little black girls everywhere.
On Friday, a trailer for Disney’s live-action adaptation of their classic animated fairy tale went viral. Halle is seen underwater in the one minute and 23-second teaser with her trademark long locs, which seem to be red to match the character. Halle sings “Part Of Your World,” the celebratory song from the first animated Little Mermaid film, in the video.
Young girls watching the trailer on TikTok watched in awe because Halle is so magical in her portrayal of Ariel.
A trend of parents recording their kids reacting to the Disney trailer is going viral on TikTok, revealing how awestruck the girls are. One mother shared her daughter, Maya, who was almost speechless upon seeing Bailey as Ariel on her television screen. Looking back at her mother, stammered, May eventually uttered: “She’s brown like me, I’m so excited to see this movie.”
“She’s Black? Yay,” another little girl in a video posted by TikTok user @thedfwdad exclaimed. “I just want to watch it now.”
In the video that featured three young girls, the father wrote:
Never thought a movie trailer could make me cry but then I saw @halle and knew how it would make my kids feel.
Another sweet baby go teary-eyed watching Halle, as seen in a video posted by TikTok user @devyncoulson. “Are you crying?” the parent says to the young girl. She responded bashfully, “no.”
Halle Bailey addressed the racial criticism of her casting from online trolls in an interview for Variety’s 2022 Power of Young Hollywood issue. When Bailey thought back to how her grandparents had helped her at that time, it served as a reminder of why she was doing it.
“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 said.
The Disney’s remake of The Little Mermaid arrives in theaters on May 26, 2023.