Halle Bailey is receiving her flowers from fellow brown and Black women worldwide following her role as Ariel in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid. During her flight, Bailey posted a note from Delta airline pilot Jess O. on Twitter with a caption thanking her for the “beautiful note.”
this amazing pilot on the plane gave me this beautiful note today 😢♥️ pic.twitter.com/uE1P3oynQP
— Halle (@HalleBailey) November 7, 2022
“This amazing pilot on the plane gave me this beautiful note today,” Bailey tweeted with a photo of the handwritten note.
“Miss Bailey, It is an honor to have you on board today. Thank you for being an inspiration to little brown girls all over the world like we were a few years ago,” Jess signed. “your young Latina female Delta pilot.”
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In July 2021, Bailey celebrated the movie getting wrapped after years of creation with a photo on Instagram of herself in the ocean showing off her magical green tail, red locs, and sultry vocals.
“I feel so grateful to have experienced this film in all of its glory. It has been the toughest experience being away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known, to feeling self-doubt/ loneliness, but also feeling such freedom and perseverance as I’ve reached the end,” she wrote. “This experience has made me so much stronger than I ever thought I could be.”
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Bailey has spoken about the role’s impact on her life since playing the iconic aquatic princess Ariel. The artist has been the center of conversation regarding whether Disney should have cast a Black woman as a red-headed mermaid. In contrast, others are ecstatic over the representation of character change.
“It’s changed my perspective on everything” and “impacted my life in so many ways” since the reveal of the movie’s first trailer. Bailey has hopes the representation she now brings to the iconic story will mean just as much to young audiences as it does to her and Disney.
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“The fact that now it’s getting to be played by me, a person who looks like me, woman of color, I’m just like, wow, I’m so grateful what it will do for all the other little Black and brown boys and girls who will see themselves in me,” Bailey said. “Because I know if I had seen myself when I was younger, I think my whole perspective would’ve changed.”
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The movie, directed by Rob Marshall, also stars Javier Bardem, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Jonah Hauer-King and Melissa McCarthy and will release the next year 2023.
