The Little Mermaid Interview: Melissa McCarthy & Javier Bardem on Landing These Iconic Roles
85One of the most exciting elements of Rob Marshall’s live-action remake of Disney classic The Little Mermaid is the ensemble cast playing these unforgettable characters. Alongside the talented Halle Bailey as Ariel, Melissa McCarthy plays the wicked sea witch Ursula, with Javier Bardem as her rival and ruler of Atlantica, King Triton. While promoting the movie, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke to the duo about how they stepped into these roles, who almost played the lead role of Ariel, and more.
Marshall’s The Little Mermaid takes audiences back under the sea in a whole new way, combining stunt work and VFX to recreate Ariel’s underwater world, but it also introduces new characters, like Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina, and brand-new songs like Prince Eric’s (played by Jonah Hauer-King) “Wild Uncharted Waters.” McCarthy tells Weintraub that even in familiar numbers like “Part of Your World,” Bailey’s performance and the writing give all-new meaning to the original, saying, “It's not a whole new number, it's not a whole thing, but those little differences… Those things making it relevant to today meant so much to me.” The cast is rounded out by Jacob Tremblay as Ariel’s best friend, Flounder, Awkwafina as Scuttle, Daveed Diggs as Sebastian, and more.
Before hitting theaters on May 26, McCarthy and Bardem discussed how they landed these roles and talk about their favorite sequences in the movie. During the interview, which you can watch in the video or read along with in the transcript below, McCarthy commends the “amazing talent” that brought Atlantica to life, including the magic of editing, Marshall, and co-writer John DeLuca, and Bardem also shares what it was like working on Dune Part Two with director Denis Villeneuve.
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There are 58,984 views in 10 videos for The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid has approximately 1 hour of watchable video on his channel, making up less than 0.21% of the total overall content on Collider Interviews's YouTube channel.