On July 3, 2019, Disney announced its new Ariel — and she didn’t look like any Ariel before her. Halle Bailey was 19, one half of the singing duo Chloe x Halle, and she wore locs. Not for the announcement. For the movie. Ariel kept the locs.
Anyone who grew up on the animated classic knows the silhouette: the red hair, the tail, the voice. Casting announcements for live-action remakes usually make a small splash and fade. This one didn’t, because of what it meant and who it was for. Coverage at the time framed Bailey as the first woman of color cast as a traditionally white princess in Disney’s live-action remakes — a door that had simply never opened before, opened for a teenage singer from Atlanta.
What the director said
Director Rob Marshall didn’t hedge his pick. In his statement, he praised Bailey’s “rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance — plus a glorious singing voice.” Read that list again. It is not an apology or a workaround. It is a director saying the role went to the person who had everything the role required — and then some, because the voice matters in a film built around a girl whose voice is the whole story.
That framing matters, because it is the framing Bailey deserved. She was not cast as a statement. She was cast as Ariel — and the fact that her casting also made history says more about how long the door stayed shut than it does about her.
The locs are the point on this page
Here is why this story lives on Natural Hair Rules. Bailey wears locs in her real life — and she kept her locs on screen as Ariel. Think about what that means for the little girls this page exists for. A Disney princess, in the biggest family film machine on earth, with hair that looks like theirs: worn proudly, worn beautifully, worn as a crown on a princess instead of something to be straightened away before the cameras roll.
Generations of girls with locs, braids, twists and curls have watched princesses whose hair looked nothing like their own and absorbed the quiet lesson that “princess hair” meant something else. This casting refused that lesson. The princess kept her locs. Full stop.
There is a reason the announcement travelled the way it did. The live-action remakes had, remake after remake, kept their traditionally white princesses white — and Bailey’s casting broke that pattern at the center of Disney’s catalogue, not at its edges: Ariel is the princess whose singing voice drives her entire story, and the studio handed the role to a 19-year-old singer whose voice its own director called glorious. One half of Chloe x Halle, a duo built on sister harmonies, was now the voice of the most famous mermaid in the world.
Join the conversation
Were you watching when this casting was announced in 2019 — and what did it mean to you to see a Disney princess keep her locs? And be honest: which animated princess would YOU most love to see reimagined with natural hair next? Tell us below.
Source note: Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid was announced on July 3, 2019, when she was 19 and one half of the duo Chloe x Halle. Director Rob Marshall’s statement praising her “rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance — plus a glorious singing voice,” and the contemporary framing of Bailey as the first woman of color cast as a traditionally white princess in Disney’s live-action remakes, are as reported by TheWrap and the entertainment trades. That Bailey wears locs and kept them on screen as Ariel is part of that casting coverage and the film’s record.
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