Comedy actress Awkwafina has been getting a lot of attention for playing Scuttlebutt in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, and not only because people want to stab their eardrums when she sings.
In a recent interview with SlashFilm, Awkwafina and costar Jason Tremblay (Flounder) were asked one of the most pertinent questions anyone could ever ask about mermaids: what do they eat? And also, wouldn’t they want to eat Flounder? Wouldn’t Scuttlebutt want to eat him too?
Tremblay said that “when Halle’s on land, she eats a bar of soap, which has a fluorescent scent, and then she also tries to eat a flower. So maybe they have a vegetarian diet. I mean, that’s how they’re in such good shape.”
Awkwafina agreed. “That is such a good analogy. That’s so true. That’s very observant.” Then she elaborates a bit on the whole “should we eat Flounder” debate that apparently was raging at one point, saying “it’s come up a couple times, the idea of eating Flounder. I just want to come to his defense real quick and say let him live, you know what I mean? You don’t have to be eating ’em all the time.”
As for her accent in the film, which the interviewer describes as a “New York accent,” Awkwafina said she wanted to pay tribute to Buddy Hackett, who voiced the character in the original movie.
“Well, I really love the way that Buddy Hackett did it, and I think the Scuttle that he did, with the whole dinglehopper conversation, I wanted to have elements of that. And then Rob Marshall just really let me explore. I think it was literally the day we started recording, Scuttle appeared.”
Hopefully he wasn’t too hungry.
The Little Mermaid hits theaters on May 26.