Halle Bailey is finally looking back at the storm that followed ‘The Little Mermaid’, and she is making it clear she did not let it break her.
The singer and actress, who played Ariel in Disney’s 2023 live-action remake, has opened up about the brutal backlash she faced after being cast, especially from people angry over a Black actress taking on the iconic role. Now, with her new romantic comedy ‘You, Me & Tuscany’ arriving in theaters on April 10, Bailey is reflecting on what that chapter taught her and why she now sees it very differently.
Halle Bailey Says the ‘Little Mermaid’ Backlash Changed Her
In a recent interview with The Independent, Bailey called making ‘The Little Mermaid’ “a beautiful experience for me” and said the reaction around it forced her to get better at shutting out the noise. She said, “I learned how to block out the noise,” and described the experience as “actually freeing,” even with so many clashing opinions flying at her at once.
Bailey also explained the feeling in a very vivid way, saying, “I felt like I was watching myself inside a cup, seeing how people react to it.” She added that growing up in the industry shaped her sense of self and helped keep her grounded, even when the outside noise got ugly. “None of this is real,” she said, summing up the mindset that helped her keep perspective.
That framing matters because the backlash around her Ariel casting was intense from the moment Disney announced it in 2019. Some of the loudest criticism centered on racist objections to a Black actress playing the famously red-haired mermaid, and the online hate followed her for years.
She Is Keeping Her Feet on the Ground as a New Movie Arrives
Bailey also made clear that, for her, the entertainment business is not the center of life. In the same interview, she said, “I love feeling small, realizing that the world is so big and beautiful and I’m just a tiny, tiny part of it,” before adding that what matters most is “keeping our feet on the ground and holding the people we love.”
That perspective comes after a packed few years. Since ‘The Little Mermaid’, Bailey has become a mother and continued building her acting career, including roles in ‘The Color Purple’ and ‘The Line’. Now she is moving into lighter territory with ‘You, Me & Tuscany’, a romantic comedy co-starring Regé-Jean Page that reaches theaters April 10. The film follows Anna, played by Bailey, a struggling young cook whose life changes after a chance connection in Italy.
The new movie gives Bailey a very different kind of spotlight. But the old ‘Little Mermaid’ wounds clearly still hang over the conversation, especially because people are still debating what happened back then. Some fans have rallied around her and called out the racism she faced, while others keep insisting the backlash was really about preserving the character’s original image. That split has followed the story from the start, and Bailey now seems far more interested in what she learned from it than in relitigating it.
