‘This is a really insane way to make something’: Daveed Diggs dishes on the difficulties filming ‘The Little Mermaid’

The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is here, and initial returns and reviews are looking pretty good. This is despite some early controversy about the casting of Ariel and some consternation over Awkwafina’s singing voice. It turns out that filming a movie that’s “under the sea” had its own inherent difficulties, but fortunately, Disney found a way to work around them.

In an interview with BAFTA about the film, Daveed Diggs, who plays Sebastian, revealed just how director Rob Marshall incorporated the voice actors into the overall process of the film.

“We rehearsed sort of as if it was a musical. And then our gig sort of ended right before they started shooting. We did our kind of final vocal recordings, but we got to work with all the puppeteers who would be on set eventually, like without voices still coming through.”

Having this type of collaboration really made a difference in how the actors interacted with the puppets, he said, because they all “got to listen to us” while they were performing. Even though it wasn’t the actors on set, it was “puppeteers” with “little size-appropriate sea creatures.”

“This is a really insane way to make something,” he said. “But like, so glad that Rob insisted on that kind of like company atmosphere. Because realistically, like a lot of folks only got a day to shoot with each other or whatever. But when you watch the film, you see all the relationships feel super real. And I think that’s because we had that time.”

Check out the whole video below.

Sounds like they got something right. The Little Mermaid is currently in theaters.