Little Mermaid star Halle Bailey has said she is “in awe” of the reaction to the film’s trailer, which was released to the public on 10 September during Disney’s D23 fan expo.
Bailey, who plays Ariel in a live action remake of Disney’s successful 1989 animation, was responding to a Brazilian tweet captioned: “Compilation of the reaction of black children seeing Halle Bailey as Ariel in The Little Mermaid”. Bailey posted a message in response saying: “People have been sending these reactions to me all weekend and i’m in truly in awe … this means the world to me.”
On Monday Variety reported that the trailer had recorded 104m views globally, without specifying the time period; this compares with the 355m in 24 hours for Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 and 127m in 24 hours for the live action Beauty and the Beast in 2016.
Bailey was cast in the role in 2019, triggering a backlash against her suitability for the part, which was largely characterised as racist. The trailer itself appears to have become a target for internet trolls: after it collected 1.5m “dislikes” in two days, YouTube has disabled the thumbs-down “dislike” button, while dozens of comments below it are parodying a positive response by citing dialogue from other films.
Bailey touched on the culture war and representation issues surrounding the film in a recent interview with Variety, in which she mentioned the reaction from her grandparents to her presence in the film: “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.’”
The Little Mermaid is due to be released in the US on 26 May 2023.
