While there’s a lot of attention on Daveed David’s seemingly lackluster performance of Sebastian (from what we’ve seen so far) in The Little Mermaid remake, another actor seems to have knocked it out of the park: Awkwafina.
The star of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens and hot off supporting roles in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Crazy Rich Asians, Awkwafina plays beloved seagull Scuttle, originally voiced by the late Buddy Hackett. Disney recently released a behind the scenes video, and it highlights the young star at her best. Take a look:
“Rob would often encourage me to like, ad-lib,” she says in the clip, which then cuts to Scuttle asking for a compliment from Ariel (Halle Bailey). Scuttle to Ariel:
“You know, why don’t you tell me something nice. Hey Scuttle, I like your hair. I like the center part because the side part looks like it’s receding a little bit.”
Her behind the scenes Sebastian riff goes like this: “I love you, Sebastian, and I wanna get married to you. And I wanna do it in Vegas, and I want my family to be there as witnesses.”
In a HelloGiggles interview from 2020, Awkwafina said that getting to put her own spin on Scuttle was “really cool” and that she was genuinely shocked when she was offered the part. She said when she got the news she “couldn’t believe it” because Scuttle was “a favorite character of mine.”
“And then I met [director] Rob Marshall, who directed some of my favorite moves ever like Chicago, and I definitely was a little intimidated.” However, once she got to work with Rob Marshall and Lin Manuel Miranda on the music, things became much easier.
She said they both “provided a really comfortable and nice environment to just do it.” In a more recent recent interview with ScreenRant, Awkwafina said she had zero desire to try and replicate Hackett’s take on the character. Instead, she wanted to make a character that was completely her own.
“Aw, man. Buddy Hackett’s performance in the original is so good and so memorable, and I think you can’t duplicate that performance. The Scuttle that we’ve grown up with is Scuttle, but what I definitely did want to incorporate was that Scuttle is a nosybody, she’s a meddler and she’s also very neurotic, so I feel like those came easy. It was so fun to play Scuttle.”
The Little Mermaid hits theaters on May 26.
