Original ‘Little Mermaid’ defends Halle Bailey as Ariel amid backlash

The original Ariel agrees Halle Bailey is fit for life under the sea.

Jodi Benson — who voiced Ariel in the 1989 hit “The Little Mermaid” — publicly applauded Disney for casting the black singer in the live-action rendition of the film after racist and hateful comments erupted on Twitter under the hashtag #NotMyAriel.

“The most important thing is to tell the story,” Benson, 57, said during a panel at Florida Supercon, which was posted on Instagram Sunday. “We have, as a family, raised our children and for ourselves that we don’t see anything that’s different on the outside. I think that the spirit of a character is what really matters. What you bring to the table in a character as far as their heart and their spirit is what really counts.”

“We need to be storytellers,” Benson continued. “And no matter what we look like on the outside, no matter our race, our nation, the color of our skin, our dialect, whether I’m tall or thin, whether I’m overweight or underweight, or my hair is whatever color, we really need to tell the story.”

She added, “The outside package, because let’s face it, I’m really, really old, and when I’m singing ‘Part of Your World,’ if you were to judge me by the way I look on the outside, it might change the way you interpret the song. But if you close your eyes you can still hear the spirit of Ariel.”

Comments slamming the choice to cast Bailey, 19, to portray the red-headed sprite first emerged on Twitter last week, citing the character’s Danish origins as their biggest qualm.

“It’s not a movie about mermaids … it’s about the 1989 Disney movie based on the story ‘The Little Mermaid’ Written by Hans Christian Andersen where he describes white skin as blue eyes,” Paola Flores posted on Twitter.

But Disney’s cable network, Freeform, wasn’t hearing it and clapped back at the haters on Instagram on Sunday too.

“Yes. The original author of ‘The Little Mermaid’ was Danish. Ariel…is a mermaid. She lives in an underwater kingdom in international waters and can legit swim wherever she wants (even though that often upsets King Triton, absolute zaddy),” wrote Freeform in the post captioned “An open letter to the Poor, Unfortunate Souls.” “But for the sake of argument, let’s say that Ariel, too, is Danish. Danish mermaids can be black because Danish *people* can be black.”

And when all is said and done, Ariel is still just a fictional character, Freeform added.

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