The Director Rob Marshall on Halle Bailey as “The Little Mermaid”
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The Little Mermaid, a remake of the animated classic that's now using live actors, opens this weekend. A remake like this is not without all kinds of risks. The underwater musical sequences have to convince us that they're real. Generations of fans grew up on the 1989 original, and they'll hold it to some very high standards.

And ever since the singer and actress Halle Bailey was announced as the new Ariel, there's been a racist backlash from a small but loud chorus on social media, and it feels all too familiar.

While it's got a lot of fans, it is also being attacked by some internet trolls. The actress Halle Bailey stars as Ariel in Disney's new live-action film. And she looks nothing like the animated Little Mermaid with red hair from the original 1989 classic. Then there are the ugly racist tweets. The Little Mermaid is white, not black.

Nomi Frye covers pop culture for The New Yorker, and she talked about The Little Mermaid the other day with its director, Rob Marshall. Now, Marshall is not your typical blockbuster director. He began his career as a dancer on Broadway, but he was injured while performing in Cats.

So he eventually turned to filmmaking. Since then, Marshall has directed Chicago, which 20 years ago won the Oscar for Best Picture. And he's made ambitious musical films like Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns. Here's Rob Marshall talking with Nomi Frye.

Thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you, Novi. Lovely to be here. Yeah. Seems like such a monumental achievement to even approach this text and bring it to the screen in the way that you have done.

And I guess I'll start by asking, what was your relationship with The Little Mermaid before, you know, starting this project? Were you a fan? Did you have any thoughts about it or associations? Yes. Well, you know, it's funny. In 1989, when the film came out, the animated film, I was doing Broadway. And I remember the whole Broadway community was so excited that this film was coming out because it was really the return of the musical to the screen. Even though it was animated, you know, there was like a

Proper score. People actually singing.

The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake. You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake. Just look at the world. I mean, musicals were dead at that point. And so we were so excited. I was so thrilled to see it in the theater. And I remember later, years later, when I did the film Chicago, it felt like...

You know, that was sort of pushing the door open for live-action musicals. But in a way, it all started with this Little Mermaid in 1989 because it was really a resurgence of musicals on film. You think about all those incredible films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, all those musicals, original musicals for film that came.

And, you know, so I've always had like a connection to it, feeling like it opened the door for me and Chicago. That's so interesting to think about. I guess I, you know, not being part of the Broadway community, I've never thought about it in that way. You know, for me, it was just like a beloved Disney, you know, animated movie, but it does have that component of being Broadway.

A full-on musical. And it's on screen. So that was the connection to it. And then, you know, musicals for me, like my first movie that I ever saw was Mary Poppins. You know, but there was Oliver and My Fair Lady and Sound of Music. And, you know, those movies just shaped me as a young child. So I always, you know, I mean, literally, I was always dancing around my house, literally, around the living room, literally dancing.

Literally, one time I was like dancing from couch to chair to couch to chair and landed on the coffee table and broke it. Oh, God. So that was not good. But I mean, it's just, if it's in you, it's in you. It's, you know, you somehow you catch the bug and it's part of you, you know. Was it an immediate yes from you? No, actually it wasn't. I mean, in fact, I think we might have turned it down twice. Huh. Interesting. Well, because we thought, well, how do you do that?

And I was also concerned about a remake. I really didn't want to do a frame-by-frame remake of something, but they were excited about us reimagining it and looking at it from another angle. And I have to say, for me, I went back to the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Interesting. That really helped me because I saw in that –

a very modern story. It's really timeless about a young girl who feels displaced, doesn't feel she belongs, and, you know, really embarks on a journey of self-discovery and also breaking down the barriers and walls between herself, her world, and the other world. Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat?

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? And so it was really about prejudice and breaking down those barriers. And I just felt, wow, isn't that the world we live in? I mean, for me, the whole time I was doing this movie, it felt really like an antidote to...

Exactly. How do you do it?

Wow, such a good question. I mean, the first thing we did really was...

realize that we had to do all of the underwater work in a blue screen stage because you can't – we can't use actual water because people are singing and speaking. So it doesn't work like that. So we had to create that environment.

But what I realized was, you know, we had to be weightless. People had to be able to fly around and move and swim. I mean, that was the whole idea. So, and I realized that the way to start would be the sort of the conventional way, which is storyboarding. So you storyboard the scene, like this is how it should be. That moved into something called animatics, which is like a live storyboard, like a moving storyboard. And then we moved into something called pre-visualization, which is almost like a little mini movie, little mini animated movie. So

So you have this all planned out prior, and that took months and months and months and months and months. And this is all digital, or does it involve any live actors? Not yet. Not yet. Okay. So it's really just the shape, because what we had to do is we had to communicate what the scene would be to the stunt teams and to our production designer, costume designer, and cinematographer, you know, how we're going to move the camera, how we're going to move the actors around. Right.

And each literally in a scene, as an example, in a scene, I would say action eventually and the actors would be on one sort of rig and they would do a couple lines and I'd say cut. Now we'd have to put them on another rig to do that move.

Wow. So it was like literally shot in pieces. I mean, the goal for me is that when you see the film, you're unaware of any kind of... Sure, it's seamless. Seamless. Yeah. And also what's there is...

that's real are the people. But what's not real is, I mean, the CGI elements is everything around them. So the water, the vegetation, the fish, all of those things, the whole world around them, that's completely digital, as is their hair. They all had wig caps. They all had to wear wig caps because the hair is moving. I was going to ask about the hair. Yes. And then even Ariel's costume is all digital. Now, of course, we built it so that when she's on stage,

On land, you see it. But underwater, it was just – I mean, I guess Javier Bardem as Triton had his armor, so that was truly real. And Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, her top, a lot of that was real. But ultimately, you know, it was all –

But that's why the movie took four and a half years because the post-production on this took two years. And, you know, I was relentless about the look of it because it had to be, you had to believe. And for me, as soon as I'm in a film and I see some CGI work that I feel is just so artificial, I feel, hmm. Can you tell? Is that something that? I can, unfortunately. I mean, I try not to. I just want to sort of live in the world. But when it pulls you out, it's not good.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. The funny thing about musicals for me in general is, you know, a musical, especially a musical film, can go off the rails in two seconds because there's that moment when someone starts to sing where it either feels organic and earned and

and real or it feels completely embarrassing. Oh, totally. Yeah, because there's a moment, it's a moment of artifice. It's like, oh, suddenly you're singing? Like, what's happening? Exactly. And it only works when it feels like an extension of the scene in some way. Like, they can't,

like words aren't enough so you sing or movement's not enough so you dance and it should feel seamless and organic and that's always been the goal. Yeah. And I'm always aware of that when I'm working on a movie especially because it's such a real genre. You know, you're sitting in the movie. It's different in a theater. You're in a theater and it feels artificial already so when someone sings it doesn't feel too strange but movies are so realistic that you have to be so careful about how that first moment happens when the first moment of singing happens. I mean, with music

In our film, Ariel sings Part of Your World. That's the first musical number in the movie. It's 15 minutes in. It's 15, right. It takes a while because I was watching and I was like, okay, I know this movie is supposed to be a musical, but I was like, oh, she's singing. Yeah.

It's been a while since the beginning. It does take a little bit. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, every musical has their own sort of shape. And this is sort of the shape of that because that song is literally like our, like our version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. You know, it's an I want song.

And it's what begins the motor of the whole piece. What's her goal? What does she want? When people talk about I want songs, they always reference part of your world or somewhere over the rainbow. You know, that's what that is. And, you know, I wanted to create at the beginning –

I wanted to create a real world above on the ship. I wanted to make sure that you were inside the story and believed it before we're sort of asking people to hear someone sing. And it's what I love about part of your world is that

It's just her thoughts, you know, it's an extension of what she's feeling and she's speaking to Flounder. You know, I don't understand why, you know, those people up there, you know, why we should be afraid of them. Yeah. You know, because she's collecting all these beautiful things, you know, they make all these beautiful things. I don't believe they can be that bad, you know, and I feel like, wow, I mean, that she has that moment. She can actually sing it.

And it can come from her almost like an internal monologue coming out of her, you know. And the goal is that by the time she sings, you're ready for that. You know, you feel ready and now you're ready and you can embrace musical. Betcha on land they understand Bet they don't reprimand their dog Bright young women Sick of foremen Ready to stand

Ready to know what the people know. Ask them my questions and get some answers. What's a f- Why does it, what's the word? Unwinded my chain. Wouldn't I love, love to explore the top of a-

That obviously also touches on all of these questions of kind of cultural, you know, the complaints that because, you know—

Halle Bailey is a woman of color and, you know, this is a very diverse version of the story, adaptation of the story. There was kind of backlash that this is like, oh, it's too woke, you know, like they're doing Disney is going woke, you know, all of that talk. Well, it's ironic. I'll tell you why. There was zero agenda. Interesting. Okay. So when we went to cast the role of Ariel, um,

It was let's find the best person for the role, period. That was it. We saw everybody. We saw every ethnicity. We just looked for the best person. And Hallie came in. She sang Part of Your World. It was so moving, so touching, so deep. And then she read for us. And she was 18 when she came in for us. She's 23 now. So that's the length, right? Right.

And she was otherworldly. And when people see the film, they'll see she's Ariel. I never thought once about skin color. I mean, I will say it was my intention to make the sisters the daughters of the seven seas because I really wanted to lean into the mythology of Triton and all of that. And I thought, well, here we are. We have seven of these mermaids. So let's make them the daughters of the seven seas. So that was fun.

But it was never sort of like let's do a woke version of Little Mermaid. It was let's just do the best version of Little Mermaid. And I hope, you know, to me, this whole controversy in a way feels archaic. I mean, you know, like from another century, you know. I mean, I did Cinderella. Yeah.

as a choreographer in 1997 with Brandy playing Cinderella. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember that with Whoopi and this fabulous cast and Whitney Houston. And it was a colorblind casting and it was sort of so, sort of, you know, I don't know, new at that time. But that was 1997. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much, Rob. No, this has been a pleasure. This has been so nice.

Rob Marshall is the director of Disney's new Little Mermaid, and he spoke with Nomi Frye, a staff writer at The New Yorker. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbess of Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by the New Yorker.