Disney's The Little Mermaid LIVE ACTION

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKBj-vSBgIs

[veu]

Halle Bailey is back in London:

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKHRfDlh8LB

[veu]

It's confirmed: Halle Bailey is in London.

Here photos of her new official instagram page:

http://instagram.com/p/CKPEFUEB4nz

http://instagram.com/p/CKPER4tB2u1

http://instagram.com/p/CKPGNoxBHl1

[veu]

Jonah Hauer-King (Prince Eric in 'The Little Mermaid' remake) commented on Halle's Instagram post:

Chloe Bailey is in California and Halle is filming The Little mermaid in London but the two sisters are still doing live streams:

http://instagram.com/p/CKPGNHWhYOu

[veu]

Halle Bailey in London. She remind me an Angel or a Winx Fairy, she is too beautiful!

http://instagram.com/p/CKPpCB4BzPQ

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKP2P3Th-hC

[veu]

[veu]

Italian article about Halle Bailey as Ariel from IoDonna:

Da Regé-Jean Page a Halle Bailey: il trionfo degli attori black al cinema e nelle serie tv

Basta ruoli stereotipati oppure marginali, è boom di stelle black: dalla televisione (con serie fenomeno come Bridgerton) al cinema (il prossimo 007 sarà una donna di colore) gli artisti afroamericani stanno vivendo – finalmente – un periodo d'oro
di PAOLA MEDORI
Al cinema e in tv trionfano gli attori e le attrici di colore

Regé-Jean Page, Halle Bailey, Regina King. Apprezzati dall’industria dell’intrattenimento e contesi dagli studios, si stanno affermando generazioni black pronte a contrastare lo stigma del razzismo. Alla luce delle proteste del movimento Black Lives Matter e dell’incertezza politica, il presente e il prossimo futuro sembrano dunque aver preso una piega invocata da tempo, quella del gender inclusive nell’arte e nella cultura.

E in epoca di diversità si fanno simboli del cambiamento. Abbattano i muri di Hollywood, terra riservata a pochi e legata ad un passato di ipocrisia, di discriminazione razziale nell’assegnazione dei ruoli.

Scopriamo assieme gli attori di colore emergenti e in ascesa, già famosi oppure in procinto di diventarlo.

Hollywood, una nuova rappresentazione
Negli ultimi dieci anni le persone di colore, in ruoli da protagonista, sono quadruplicate (passando dal 5 per cento a circa il 21 per cento). Si prendono la scena, conquistano salari equiparati, e a volte anche superiori a quelli dei colleghi bianchi, e copertine dei magazine più esclusivi. Una nuova politica multirazziale sostenuta dalla Disney con progetti ancora più inclusivi, come Halle Bailey prossima Sirenetta afro-americana o l’acclamato film d’animazione Soul, sulla vita di un insegnante di colore newyorkese appassionato di jazz.

Tra i titoli più attesi del 2021, per la prima volta vedremo in azione un James Bond che veste i panni di una donna nera. In No Time to Die di Cary Fukunaga, il 25esimo capitolo della serie dedicata a 007 (in uscita ad aprile), l’attrice Lashana Lynch, 32 anni, eredita il titolo di agente con licenza di uccidere dopo che Bond (Daniel Craig) ha deciso di dedicarsi a una vita tranquilla. Ruolo che finora era stato una prerogativa maschile.


L’emancipazione della comunità nera
«È incredibile come oltre 50 anni dopo queste conversazioni tra neri siano sempre le stesse che potremmo ascoltare oggi: come essere accettati, come contare, come non avere le porte chiuse dai bianchi, come farsi rispettare, come non essere chiamati negri», parole dell’attrice Regina King parlando del suo ottimo esordito alla regia con One Night in Miami.

Il film, disponibile su Prime Video, immagina l’incontro (realmente avvenuto nel febbraio del 1964) fra quattro figure black colossali che hanno svolto un ruolo essenziale nel movimento per i diritti civili: l’attivista politico Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), la star del football Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), il raffinato musicista Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr) e il campione Cassius Clay (Eli Goree). Una storia contemporanea che parla di cosa significa essere afroamericano, di lotte di integrità e ingiustizia razziale che ha consacrato Kingsley Ben-Adir come attore rivelazione ai recenti Gotham Awards.

Una maggiore rappresentanza di tutte le etnie

Una strada lunga, e non facile, iniziata alcuni anni fa con la campagna #OscarsSoWhite (quanto sono bianchi gli Oscar), contro la “discriminazione” nell’assegnazione dei premi, alla quale hanno aderito attori, attrici, registi e produttori. Sostenuta coraggiosamente da cineasti come Spike Lee che ha sempre raccontato nelle sue pellicole la black culture, le ribellioni, l’emarginazione politica e la rabbia della comunità nera.

Regé-Jean Page, il sensuale duca black di Bridgerton

In Bridgerton, il feuilleton d’evasione in onda su Netflix, è il sogno romantico di tutte le donne del pianeta, Regé-Jean Page, 30 anni, l’attore nativo dello Zimbabwe, che a 14 anni si trasferì a Londra, interpreta l’irresistibile Duca di Hastings nella società inglese dell’800 multirazziale e inclusiva. Come la sua produttrice, Shonda Rhimes, la stella nascente condivide l’impegno nel restituire alle persone di colore i diritti negati e taciuti dalla storia.

«Il mio ingresso nell’industria dello spettacolo l’ho fatto con l’interpretazione di uno schiavo, un cliché fatto e finito per un attore di colore», ha dichiarato Regé-Jean Page ricordando il suo ruolo nel remake della celebre serie, del 1977, Radici. Ora è tra i papabili nomi in lizza per sostituire Daniel Graig nel ruolo di James Bond. Solo rumors? Per ora il “duca” risponde lusingato di non aver ricevuto nessuna proposta.


Halle Bailey, la Sirenetta dagli occhi scuri



Protagonista de La Sirenetta, il nuovo adattamento live action Disney diretto da Rob Marshall sarà l’attrice e cantate Halle Bailey, incantevole 20enne dalla potente voce e nota per la serie Grown-ish. La sua Ariel è un personaggio diverso rispetto alla classica rappresentazione fatta nel film d’animazione uscito nel 1989.

Una rivisitazione in chiave moderna che le conferisce più potere, identità e determinazione. Niente fluenti chiome rosse per l’eroina danese che vive nelle profonde acque e ha le movenze di una ragazza moderna appassionata di Prince e Beyoncé. Che insieme alla sorella maggiore Chloe ha formato un duo R&B, Chloe x Halle, amatissimo dalle figlie di Obama.

Omar Sy, lo spericolato ladro trasformista

Sta dominando le classifiche dello streaming mondiale con Lupin, la nuova serie francese targata Netflix che racconta le vicende di un ladro nella Parigi di oggi che si ispira al famoso ladro gentiluomo. Protagonista Omar Sy, classe 1978, già visto in blockbuster hollywoodiani come X-Men: Giorni di un futuro passato e Jurassic World (sta tornando anche nel terzo capitolo in uscita nel 2022), e qualche tempo fa nel campione d’incassi Quasi Amici che gli ha valso un César.

L’attore di origini senegalesi e mauritane, ha dato vita con stile e modernità all’iconico personaggio inventato da Maurice Leblanc, nel 1905. La serie affronta anche il tema del razzismo, come ha sottolineato lo stesso interprete: «Non siamo ancora al punto in cui il colore della pelle non conti, finché ci saranno discriminazioni parlarne non sarà mai abbastanza. E Lupin è un’ottima occasione per farlo».

Javicia Leslie, la prima Batwoman di colore

Splendidi capelli ricci afro, tuta aderentissima e un lungo mantello. C’è una nuova eroina in città, pronta a proteggere Gotham City. È Javicia Leslie, 33enne attrice americana di colore, protagonista della seconda stagione di Batwoman, dopo l’addio al ruolo dell’attrice Ruby Rose. La sensuale donna pipistrello che sul set ha imparato a tirare pugni, regala al suo personaggio nuove sfumature e un’audace senso di ribellione.

«Sono estremamente orgogliosa di essere la prima attrice di colore a interpretare Batwoman in televisione e, come donna bisessuale, sono onorata di entrare a far parte di questo show rivoluzionario che ha sostenuto la comunità Lgbtq+», ha dichiarato rimarcando l’impronta di maggiore inclusività nel mondo dei supereroi.

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKVRLZsh8H2

http://instagram.com/p/CKXEMUaBTEj

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKe2BcxB5as

http://instagram.com/p/CKe2jUiBwWC

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKe2TATh5Hu

http://instagram.com/p/CKbl9CehR4H

[veu]

From Collider:

‘The Little Mermaid’ Star Daveed Diggs Says He Did More Research for Sebastian Than for Any Other Role in His Career
BY ADAM CHITWOOD
7 HOURS AGO

“I want somebody who is from Trinidad or from Jamaica, depending on where we landed with the role, to be able to see themselves in this."

daveed-diggs-blindspotting-social
One of the biggest films that was just about to start production right when the pandemic happened is Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Filmmaker Rob Marshall – the director of Chicago and Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns – is in the director’s chair on the film, and fans are mighty excited to see/hear Hamilton alum Daveed Diggs’ take on the beloved crab Sebastian.

Which is why, when Collider’s own Christina Radish recently spoke with Diggs about Season 2 of his TNT series Snowpiercer, she asked about his work in The Little Mermaid. As it turns out, Diggs revealed that he did more research for the role of Sebastian than he did for any other role of his career thus far – and for good reason:

“I worked harder on Sebastian probably than I have for any role in my life. It’s tricky. I wasn’t sure, and this is also true of Layton. I tend to say yes to things when I feel like I can do it, but I’m actually not sure I’m the smart choice or the person naturally who should be doing it. That’s true of Sebastian, for a lot of ways that are uncomfortable. I’m not of Caribbean descent, doing that kind of work and trying to immerse myself. I’ve spent a lot of time in Trinidad and I went to Jamaica to research, and I did a lot of voice work with Chris Walker and with the late Tony Hall, to try to get the voice right. But more than the voice, the thing about a dialect is that everybody’s voice is actually very different, so consistency is really more important than accuracy. Your speech pattern is based on culture, and that was the thing I didn’t wanna let down.”

Diggs continued, adding that his intense work doesn’t even hold a candle to what star Halle Bailey – who plays Ariel – is doing:

“I want somebody who is from Trinidad or from Jamaica, depending on where we landed with the role, to be able to see themselves in this, in some way. Even though maybe my voice doesn’t sound exactly right, I wanted to feel like somebody connected to it. I had so many friends growing up for whom Sebastian was the first time they had seen themselves represented in mainstream American culture. As flawed as that is, that’s still important. So, that role stressed me out quite a bit, but also is incredibly fun. Like I said, I did more research for that role, than I have for any part, ever, and I’m literally a crab. It seems crazy maybe, in hindsight. And the amount of lifting I’m doing in that is nothing compared to Halle [Bailey], or any of the like incredible performers who are really carrying that. I just sing a couple of cool songs and call it a day.”

While Diggs didn’t confirm or reveal much about how Sebastian will be portrayed in the film, he did have heavy praise for the animation teams at Disney and Pixar :

“[Being part of The Little Mermaid is] pretty cool. Working in the animation space is always pretty cool. I love that stuff. But something as big as Disney’s The Little Mermaid – and I felt this on Soul too, just because of Pixar, particularly for us from the Bay Area because it’s right there and it has this element of mystery about it – just to even get to be behind the scenes on those things is pretty wild. You get to hear a new song before it comes out and it’s amazing, and then you hear the performance of it by an actor you might not expect to be able to do that and that’s also amazing. There are so many cool surprises that I know and I’m just sitting on.”

The Little Mermaid doesn’t yet have a firm release date, but it remains a highly anticipated film with Melissa McCarthy playing Ursula, Javier Bardem playing King Triton, and Jacob Tremblay and Awkwafina as Flounder and Scuttle, respectively.

[veu]

/photo/1

http://instagram.com/p/CKiGdX9BJfa

[veu]

[veu]

From TZR:

(Hair)

From 'Dreamgirls' to 'Black Panther,' Camille Friend Reigns As The Hairstyling Queen of Cinema
She's arguably the secret backbone of the Marvel franchise.

BY ISIAH MAGSINO
1.25.2021

What could possibly be the greatest achievement from working with Marvel Studios? Could it be brushing shoulders with the likes of Chris Evans or Lupita Nyong’o? Perhaps the accolades of being a part of an international cinematic powerhouse would take the cake. For Camille Friend, the lead hairstylist and arguably secret backbone of the Marvel Franchise, neither of the aforementioned suffice. "I get to be the cool auntie," she tells TZR with a wide grin. "All the kids love me because I’m the auntie who works for Marvel."

In 2014, Friend would debut her magic touch as head of the Hair Department to Stan Lee's universe with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She would return shortly after to fulfill the same duties for Captain America: Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. Though it may seem like a difficult task to envision the unique hairstyle personalities of each super-being, Friend actually finds it to be one of her favorite parts. Being able to work on an origin story allows her to "put [her] stamp and signature" at the very base of a series.

For Black Panther, this stamp would inherently turn into a beacon of a turning tide for Black beauty. Aside from being the top grossing super-hero film in the U.S. during it's debut in 2018, Black Panther was among the first of its kind to center around Afro-centric traditions. African culture, hairstyles, and fashion were not only woven throughout the film to support its narrative, but were put on a pedestal and gloriously celebrated as the film's protagonists wore these assets like badges of honor. "It was a moment where we could feel empowered to be Black," Friend says. For those who have yet to familiarize themselves, the storyline’s iconic setting is Wakanda: a hidden African country that ceaselessly encompasses cultural elements of the past, present, and future. "I sourced inspiration from traditional Africa and tribal elders to modern families, and how hairstyles may evolve," says Friend. Since the movie's debut in 2018, Friend notes how her work's contributions to Black representation in cinema exceeds every expectation she had. Well, that's if she had any to begin with. "I never count my chickens before they hatch. I focus on the work in the present," she says. "But, as a Black woman, Black Panther will be one of my proudest moments."

In the present day, the Los Angeles resident still has her hands full. How full? Full enough that her boyfriend recently commented on how her phone never stops ringing. The hairstylist recently took her creativity to the upcoming live-action remake of Disney's Little Mermaid, enthroning Halle Bailey with the character's signature red locks. On the day of our conversation, she mentioned how her following afternoon would consist of creating a wig for an upcoming actor in Australia for an undisclosed film.

Though Friend may seem as if she's the complete hyper-focused go-getter who works tirelessly to reach a particular goal, the truth slightly diverges. In fact, her career in hair styling is metaphorically more aligned with something that was written in the stars long before Friend knew it herself. She claims that her present-day success was not imagined when she began her career in her early 20s, but hairstyling has always played a major role in her life.

"I love that hair salon, chemical-y smell," Friend says. What might seem putrid for others, is comforting to her because of how synonymous the scents of the salon are with her childhood. Hairstyling is jokingly the family trade for Camille. She was raised by an arsenal of hairstylists comprised of her mother, aunts, and uncles. Time spent in the salon where her family works in Phoenix, Arizona rivaled the time in her childhood home in Tempe, Arizona. Putting in weaves became second nature at the age of 12. "Lemon fluff shampoo made me so happy back then and I still use it occasionally."

During her early 20s, Friend packed up her bags and moved to Los Angeles where she unsurprisingly found work at a hair salon there. The entrance of her path to movies and TV shows would be paved by her boss at the time who brought her along to work on the 1996 comedy Thin Line of Love and Hate. Her steady hand and skillful eye would then pay off after actress, Simbi Khali, decided to bring Friend along to work on the 1996 sitcom, Third Rock From the Sun. "The rest is history."

Friend's resume is long stacked: Dreamgirls, The Secret Life of Bees, Django Unchained, and The Hunger Games are only but a few major motion pictures that she's been a part of. For each film, Friend does as many successful actors do: become the character herself. Her research is extremely thorough and filled with yearbooks, speaking with subjects, understanding the time era, and trips to the archival libraries scattered around Los Angeles. Renowned actor and model Cicely Tyson even gave her the spill on jazz trumpeter Miles Davis for Don Cheadle's Miles Head and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

For Friend, yearbooks are exceptionally one of the most accurate tools for her line of work. "The thing is, movies will be set in, say, the 1950s, and everyone will assume that the character will have a matching hairdo for that time. But, that’s not always true," she says. "Some people don’t change their hairstyles, so that character might’ve had a style from the 1940s. Yearbooks are oftentimes the most telling, and I have a whole collection of them."

Through it all, Friend continues to believe in the power of what a good hairstyle can do. "It's like a designer handbag," she says. "I've witnessed time and time again how a good wig can transform someone; turn them into their character." And according to Friend, this isn't only relevant to actresses or superstars — it's universal.

Opportunities continue to land in the lap of Friend, and the hair guru makes it a point to pay her success back. As TV shows and movies continue to celebrate racial diversity in their casts, it's important for hairstylists to adapt — something that the industry is still working on. "There shouldn't be an actor that steps on set onto the trailer that you don't know how to do their hair or makeup. Those days are over," she says. "And if you don't know, then you need to learn because it's unacceptable." This belief plays a large part in why Friend founded Hairscholars: a mentorship program that teaches students both the technical skills of styling and ropes of the trade. Everything from how to dye properly to getting new jobs and making more money is all taught by Friend herself. "My goal is to offer my hand and bring people up to fill these spaces."

Friend reassures that not every day is a good updo. Her days get tough and sometimes her evenings are met with a few shed tears from her busy schedule: "Meditation. I swear by it." Beginning her practice nearly two years ago, Friend notes how centering herself and focusing on the present is what keeps her sane through her busy schedule. "This career is filled with ups and downs, lefts, and rights. It's nice to feel grounded." Her glowing eyes allude to her excitement for her next session of calmness and is only met with a sharp ding queuing the arrival of a new email.

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKhY68uhKSN

[veu]

Daveed Diggs says Halle Bailey is part of the reason he accepted the role of Sebastian in 'The Little Mermaid' live-action remake.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Daveed Diggs on Keeping It "Weird": I Can't "Become Somebody Else — I'm Just Not Very Good at That"
by Lacey Rose
January 28, 2021, 6:00am PST
Before his string of mainstream success — 'Hamilton,' 'Snowpiercer,' that Hanukkah song about puppies — the actor, writer and rapper was perfectly content making genre-bending art that "no one liked" (until we all caught up, that is).

In the spring of 2017, the star of Broadway's Hamilton was hovered over a podium at Brown, his alma mater, ruminating on his own celebrity.

"Daveed Diggs was born on Jan. 20, 2015, four days before his 33rd birthday, at approximately 9:40 p.m.," he began. "He strutted down a fake staircase at The Public Theater in New York, singing a song his friend had written for him to sing, playing a man who would've beat him savagely for singing it had he been born in similar circumstances roughly 224 years prior."

Diggs may have written the contents of his speech tipsy at an airport bar the day or two before, but his decision to refer to himself in the third person was well thought out. As he told the expectant crowd of college graduates, he was still getting comfortable with the disassociation between the real him and the Daveed Diggs who seemed to emerge fully formed in the public consciousness with that breakout performance. Sure, the two shared a name, a face and, where it served the brand, a résumé, but that other Diggs, the one who won both a Tony and a Grammy for originating the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the widely celebrated musical, arrived with a made-for-Hollywood story that didn't always line up with the more textured reality.

"It's an odd thing to navigate," he says now, acknowledging that popular culture has never been particularly good at embracing nuance in its celebrity narratives. "It becomes, 'Oh, he grew up poor and overcame that,' like 'That's a thing we can latch on to,' or he's Black or he's mixed or he's any of these things that were historically disenfranchised, and there's always a before and an after. Like a 'Hamilton happened and all of these things were fixed,' and the issue with that is it assumes that there was a problem before, and I'm not sure there was."

The real Diggs will tell you he grew up "poor and happy," shuttling between the homes of his white, social worker mother and Black, bus driver father, never wanting for a thing — that he spent more than a decade as a performer who happily plugged away at the margins until Hamilton declared him something more. "I know if you look at my history, it seems like I was a struggling artist. And I was, but I also chose those projects," he says of the kind of experimental art he never actually abandoned. "I didn't accidentally end up in Word Becomes Flesh or whatever it was, I chose to do that choreopoem and I liked living like that."

The question Diggs has been asking himself a lot lately is how much it all matters: Does he really need the public perception of him to line up with his own self-image, and, moreover, does he even want it to?

Whatever disconnect exists has hardly gotten in his way, after all. In fact, since May, the Oakland, California, native — who's just turned either 39 or 6, depending on your preferred Diggs timeline — has put out a first and, earlier this week, second season of TNT's dystopian thriller Snowpiercer, the Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird, the Apple cartoon Central Park, a film version of Hamilton, the Pixar movie Soul and a rash of new music, including both a Black Lives Matter protest anthem and a Hanukkah rap about puppies. And that's just the stuff that fits neatly in the narrative.

***

"I really don't have very many sad memories from my childhood," he says the first time we speak. Diggs is piping in virtually from the Los Angeles home he shares with his partner, Umbrella Academy actress Emmy Raver-Lampman, and a couple of dogs he's trying valiantly to keep out of frame. "What I remember is laughing so much my face hurt, and never ever being bored."

One of his more defining memories of his parents, with whom he's still fiercely close, dates back to preschool. The kids in his class were supposed to put on a performance for their families, but young Diggs preferred to do a gymnastics routine with his father. So, his mother worked it out with his teachers, and his dad turned up in matching rainbow tights. Reflecting on the day as he accepted his Tony Award many years later, Diggs thanked them both: his mom for giving him "permission to do something everybody else wasn't doing" and his dad for "supporting [him] and making it possible."

Though Diggs would find his calling in plays and poetry slams, it was his ability to clear hurdles, literal hurdles, at record speed that landed him his scholarship to Brown University, where he became acutely aware of his Blackness for the first time in his life. Back in the Bay, he says, everybody seemed to be "a mix of something." He wasn't even the only kid in his circle who was half-Black and half-Jewish. Sure, there were the occasional moments where his particular mix would come up in conversation, but Diggs doesn't ever remember it being something he had to navigate. "Like, one time at the [Jewish Community Center], on Purim or some sh**, a kid asked me if I would rather be white than Black," he says. "And I remember I said no and that was it. It didn't feel formative for me."

Then he arrived at Brown, which he'd been told was some sort of liberal mecca. The culture shock set in immediately. During a tour of the Rhode Island campus, he was greeted with a perplexing mix of waves, handshakes and hellos from every Black person who passed by. "It really weirded me out because it's not a thing that happened where I was from, these people who don't know me at all, and so I was very suspicious of it," he says. But a few semesters in, Diggs found himself doing the same thing, except now the greetings made sense to him. "We were such a stark minority there that you develop this muscle to be welcoming to anyone you see — an acknowledgment that we are both in this space that maybe isn't for us in a lot of ways. But, you know …" he pauses, shrugging, "you find your place."

For Diggs, that place was onstage. He threw himself into productions and workshops, graduating with a degree in theater arts before making his way back home. For years after, he shuttled between auditions and recording sessions, putting on concerts and plays. Whenever money ran low, which was often, he'd line up gigs teaching English or poetry, at one point even creating a rap curriculum for Bay Area middle schools. Ultimately, it was through a substitute teaching assignment that Diggs found his way to the improv hip-hop crew Freestyle Love Supreme, in which he met Lin-Manuel Miranda. Impressed by Diggs' talents — "he's a brilliant rapper and a brilliant actor," he says — Miranda invited Diggs to be part of the early Hamilton workshops that he was putting together. Diggs would play Alexander Hamilton's friend Lafayette in the show's first act, and Jefferson in the second. "Part of the development of [his character's] arc," says Miranda, "is me just writing the wildest sh** possible for Daveed, and knowing that he can deliver it without breaking a sweat."

Once Diggs had gotten past his initial skepticism — "I thought it was a terrible idea," he reveals now — he loved being part of it: the material, the challenge, the sense of community. The more he did, the more he wanted to do. "I was gunning for in ways that felt out of character," says Diggs. He kept in close touch with the show's director, Thomas Kail, who knew Diggs would be flying out on his own dime. "Tommy was really good about saying, 'Look, this workshop doesn't matter, if you happen to be here and you're available, of course we'd love to have you, but we're not showing it to anybody and it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, so don't worry about it.' But I didn't miss a single one. I just wanted to be around it and I was so sure that if they ever saw anybody else do it, they wouldn't ask me to come back."

Hamilton made its debut at The Public Theater on Jan. 20, 2015, and on Broadway soon after. Diggs was at virtually every performance until his last, 18 months later, on July 15 of the following year.

As the cast readied for Broadway, Diggs signed with a Hollywood manager, who took over his nightly allotment of tickets. She'd be trading them for favors, she told him: Anyone who was going to see Hamilton on one of Diggs' tickets would need to meet with him, too. "I thought it sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. Like, it's a play," says Diggs. "But her black-market ticket exchange is how I met Tina Fey and Kenya Barris and all these people who'd eventually give me jobs. And it was because she'd set these meetings for after the show, and people were so intoxicated by it. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen."

Soon, Diggs had found his next act — or acts, as it were. He landed arcs on Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Barris' Black-ish, and a greenlight for the Blindspotting screenplay that he and his childhood friend Rafael Casal had written a decade before but couldn't get off the ground. There was a flurry of film offers and endorsement deals, and even his experimental rap band Clipping, which, he says, "no one liked," got a bump.

"People were so overwhelmed by how ******* good Daveed was that they couldn't actually process how it happened without them knowing it," says Casal, who was there on Hamilton's opening night. "Because he wasn't just a rapper having a moment as an actor, and they could see that. And the shock that they weren't up on him made people swarm him." It was gratifying if a little confusing for Casal, who for years would watch as his best friend struggled to get traction, particularly as a rapper. They'd both send their music videos to local blogs and radio stations, and only Casal's, which was commercial in ways Diggs' wouldn't dare be, got picked up.

"People really didn't understand Daveed, and there was no big authority saying, 'This is it, guys.' No Kanye West being like, 'This is what music is now,' " his friend continues. "And it's interesting because we were doing this thing that's really popular now. Essentially Daveed was doing what Donald Glover was doing, five years before him, but Daveed didn't have Community. So, people would just go, 'Nah,' over and over and over again."

It didn't faze Diggs. He was never interested in courting mainstream acceptance, his collaborators say, always perfectly comfortable being "a little bit of the weirdo." In fact, even now, he insists he doesn't actually know how to make accessible art by himself. "Like, people saw an accessible value to the things that I can do," he says, "but that, for the most part, comes when other people put me in their things." Left to his own devices, Diggs says he'd be OK never doing Broadway again, content instead to fill his résumé with riskier plays on smaller stages, as he did in 2019 with White Noise. By the same token, anyone who thought he might ditch his avant-garde rap group once Hamilton hit doesn't fundamentally understand what makes him tick as an artist.

"I remember all these people saying, 'Oh well, there goes your rapper. Guess the band's over.' But I never had any doubt," says Clipping's William Hutson, who's been tight with Diggs since grade school. "I was like, 'OK, Daveed got to rap on Broadway in a show called Hamilton, he didn't write one word of that show — and a rapper is not a guy who says words, it's a guy who writes words, and this is where he does that. Look, he's a great actor, but Daveed's someone who needs to be creative and he's not going to be satisfied just being on Snowpiercer or saying words out of cartoon mouths."

What Hutson didn't yet know is that at Diggs' first meeting with his manager, he handed her a copy of the latest Clipping album and asked that she listen to it before they discussed his career prospects. "I told her, 'You've only seen this other side of me, and this is actually the sh** I'm going to keep doing and you have to be OK with that, too,' " says Diggs. "And then I said, 'I want you to tell me how I'm going to make money, but I want you to tell me how I'm going to make money and not how somebody else is going to make money because then I have to become somebody else and I'm just not very good at that.' " Nor, it was clear, was he interested.

***

When Diggs and I connect again a few weeks later, he's exhausted. Daveed Diggs, the celebrity, has never been more in demand, but the real guy is at a point now where he'd slow down if he could. Instead, he's playing catch-up on all the things he agreed to in that post-Hamilton period when everything was new and exciting and how could he not say yes? And, for the most part, he's pleased with the choices he's made. "I wanted to have all of these experiences," he tells me, "but now I've had a lot of them and I'm beginning to understand — and this is a COVID-ism — the actual cost of doing these things."

His partner had been gone for the past three months, working on a film in Australia, where he couldn't visit even if he wanted to. She was back for a few days, and then gone again; and soon he's off, too, back to Vancouver, where he'll be making a third season of Snowpiercer. So, he's trying to be more aware of the cost of what he says yes to, because the payment doesn't always make up for it, especially now that he doesn't have the same financial burdens. The other thing about having choice, he's learning, is that his choices now mean something. (For the record, he would have passed on the "Puppy for Hanukkah" opportunity, had it not been for his Clipping bandmates, says Hutson: "Jonathan [Snipes] and I were like, 'We could use the money. We're not touring this year, our band is sitting at home, so let's do some dumb sellout sh**.' ")

The decision to play Sebastian the Crab in Disney's live remake of The Little Mermaid felt considerably more fraught. But after agonizing over it, Diggs signed on, joining a star-studded cast that includes Halle Bailey (as Ariel), Melissa McCarthy (Ursula) and Javier Bardem (King Triton). Miranda's on board, too, writing new lyrics for the film, which Disney has every intention of making a gargantuan hit. But even now, having "worked harder on this voice gig for an animated crab than almost any other role," immersing himself in research trips and dialect lessons, Diggs is still uneasy with his involvement.

"I was never gunning to be in these Disney remakes and, if I'm being honest, Sebastian comes with a lot of responsibility. For a lot of folks my age who are from the Caribbean, Sebastian was the first time they'd really seen themselves in American film, and I'm not Caribbean, so …" he pauses there, acknowledging that his team will probably scream at him for even talking about this, and then continues: "We'll see if people crucify me for it."

Diggs has never been blasé about the power of representation. He got to yes on The Little Mermaid in large part because of the bold casting of Bailey, a young Black star, as Ariel. He worked with Disney's Pixar, too, as one of its "cultural consultants" on Soul, the studio's first film with a Black protagonist, to make sure it was reflective. And now he's busy fighting his own battle on Snowpiercer. The show, like the Bong Joon Ho film, is a meditation on class, but once Diggs was cast in the lead role, he felt strongly that it should be one on race, too. As he reflected on the already aired first season, he recognized how little it had been. "Nobody was planning to make a show that was touching on race because they weren't necessarily planning to have a Black protagonist. But then they got stuck with me," he jokes, though he's quite serious about the matter. "So even though I know it wasn't, some things feel like a deliberate ignorance of race and that's not useful because I'm still onscreen. You can't not deal with it."

He has every intention of dealing with it on the TV reboot of Blindspotting, which he and Casal are writing now for Starz. The film, which premiered to raves in 2018, had been a decade or so in the making and, he's said, was heavily influenced by the 2009 death of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by police in a train station a few blocks from Diggs' former Oakland home. In addition to writing and producing, Diggs starred as a formerly incarcerated man who's trying to get through the final days of his parole when he witnesses the police killing of a young Black man. Diggs won't have an onscreen presence in the TV iteration, but has every intention of exploring the same timely themes.

"We said all the time when we were doing press [for the movie] that we wished it was a period piece," says Diggs, who found himself spiraling last spring, as yet another unarmed Black man was killed at the hands of police. He wrote a lot of "really angry music" during that time, he says, much of it in response to the expectation that he say something about George Floyd's death. Media outlets were eager for his thoughts and his fans and friends wanted to hear that he was OK. He wasn't, and he didn't have anything new to say. "I was like, 'See my whole career, see everything I've ever made, nothing has changed in the light of this particular Black death.' "

Three weeks later, on Juneteenth, he put out the song "Chapter 319" with Clipping. One particularly fiery lyric — "Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop/If you vote for him again, you're a white supremacist, full stop" — helped to give the band its first viral hit. By fall, the trio had released its fourth album, a strikingly timely if still niche horror-rap offering titled "Visions of Bodies Being Burned." Simply getting his messy emotions down on paper was cathartic for Diggs, as he suspected it would be. Music has always had a way of transcending him; it's one of the reasons he'd give up everything else in his career to keep making it, even if it doesn't feed the persona of that other Daveed Diggs, the one born six years ago.

[veu]

http://instagram.com/p/CKm1ID0BMKt

[veu]

From Whatsonstage:

Daveed Diggs provides update on The Little Mermaid live-action film
Diggs will take on the role of Sebastian in the upcoming film

Author
Editorial Staff

Locations

London

29 January 2021


Hamilton star Daveed Diggs has provided an update on the live-action Disney Little Mermaid film.

Speaking to Collider earlier this week, Diggs confessed that taking on the role of Sebastian the crab "stressed him out quite a bit", saying: "I'm not of Caribbean descent, doing that kind of work and trying to immerse myself...I've spent a lot of time in Trinidad and I went to Jamaica to research, and I did a lot of voice work with Chris Walker and with the late Tony Hall, to try to get the voice right.

"But more than the voice, the thing about a dialect is that everybody's voice is actually very different, so consistency is really more important than accuracy. Your speech pattern is based on culture, and that was the thing I didn't wanna let down."

Sebastian's significance as a character was not lost on Diggs, who admitted: "I had so many friends growing up for whom Sebastian was the first time they had seen themselves represented in mainstream American culture. As flawed as that is, that's still important. So, that role stressed me out quite a bit, but also is incredibly fun."

Diggs was in awe of co-star Halle Bailey, who takes on the titular part of the flick, saying that compared to her heavy lifting he had little to do: "I just sing a couple of cool songs and call it a day."

He did say that there are some "cool surprises" that audiences should expect – especially with Hamilton writer and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda attached to the project alongside songwriter/composer Alan Menken. A variety of new tunes are pretty much a given.

Also cast in the film are Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Jacob Tremblay, Jonah Hauer-King and Awkwafina, with Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Chicago) in the director's chair.

No release date is currently set.