Yesterday, Disney released an exciting first look at the highly anticipated live-action version of The Little Mermaid: The opening verse of Daveed Diggs’ rendition of “Under The Sea.”
First listen to “Under the Sea" with Daveed Diggs as Sebastian and Halle Bailey from #TheLittleMermaid . pic.twitter.com/JovYMyyDpg
— XMPL (@XMPLMAG) May 9, 2023
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“Under The Sea” is the big showstopper song from The Little Mermaid. Like “Be Our Guest” in Beauty and the Beast, it’s the 11th-hour number that, in a staged musical, would signal the end of Act One and the start of intermission.
Also like “Be Our Guest,” unfortunately, the actor they got to do the live-action rendition of the song seemed to have a hard time with the required accent.
I will defend everything about the live action Little Mermaid until my dying breath EXCEPT Daveed Diggs accent.
— Sailor Moon (@April_Le_) May 10, 2023
They couldn't find anyone with an authentic Caribbean accent to play Sebastian? No shade to Daveed Diggs, but his "Under The Sea" just wasn't hitting. Still gonna see the movie, but I feel like authenticity was sacrificed for a big name#TheLittleMermaid
— Lancestipher (@Lancestipher) May 10, 2023
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Despite early apprehension that Sebastian’s “real-crab” character design would get in the way of immersion, it seems that the animators managed to mostly avoid falling into the Uncanny Valley.
Hamilton star Daveed Diggs, however, is taking the heat for a Jamaican accent that seems less-than-realistic to many listeners.
Unlike Ewan MacGregor’s French accent for Lumiere – which even he admitted that he did not practice very hard – Sebastian’s Jamaican accent is actually very important.
First of all, he is the only character in the movie that has such an accent; in Beauty and the Beast, many of the characters are French. In The Little Mermaid, however, Sebastian is the only one who sounds Jamaican – making him fairly important representation, both in the context of the film and in general.
When Walt Disney Studios was originally working on The Little Mermaid, they had planned to make Sebastian British – an easy and obvious choice for a court-composer-turned-nanny. One day, however, Howard Ashman (the lyricist and composer who worked with Alan Menken on those two films, and who wrote Aladdin) suggested out of the blue that they give him a different accent, one from the Caribbean.
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It was out of that suggestion that the bouncy, bubbly song “Under The Sea,” with its lively steel drum backing, came to be. There would be no “Under The Sea” were it not for the choice to make Sebastian Jamaican, so it was even more important that Disney get that part right.
Not to mention the fact that as a film that has been making efforts to center Black stories, improper representation of a Jamaican character probably stings a little extra.
Overall, fans seem excited about The Little Mermaid, and those who were lucky enough to see the premiere in Hollywood on Monday night have given it nothing but glowing reviews; but “Under The Sea” is a huge song, and Sebastian is in nearly every scene, so the rough accent is something some fans will have to prepare themselves for.