From tween YouTube sensation, to pop star, to Beyoncé’s tour mate … now the actor and musician is about to star in the live-action remake of the Disney classic. She talks about overcoming self-doubt, her soulmate sister Chlöe, and a racist backlash
Inside Halle Bailey’s apartment, in West Hollywood, the 23-year-old singer and actor is glowing in the early morning sunlight. This is not interview hyperbole: she really looks as though she is glowing. Rob Marshall, the director of The Little Mermaid, said he cast her as Ariel because she had an “otherworldly sensibility”, and, instantly, you can see what he means. Yesterday, an important package arrived. It contains a collection of Disney merchandise: branded water bottles, shirts, Ariel dolls. This stuff, with her face on it, will soon to be in the homes of countless parents with small children all across the world. “I was astounded at how cool all of it is,” she says, sweetly. “Like, insane.”
Bailey is a Disney star cut from old-fashioned cloth. She is impossibly polite, awestruck by her new life as a Disney princess, ignoring the negativity – more on that later – and seemingly utterly lovely and unflappable, or at least well media-trained, or probably both. She offers opinions, but is careful to balance them out: she misses her home town of Atlanta, Georgia she says, but, equally, she loves Los Angeles. Somehow, despite the imminent release of a reported $150m-200m blockbuster that will ultimately rise or fall on her performance as a character already beloved by millions, she is perfectly calm.