The Little Mermaid Actor Who Filmed In Water The Most Will Surprise You

The Little Mermaid actor who filmed the most in water will surprise you. From director Rob Marshall, the live-action adaptation of Disney’s iconic 1989 animated classic follows the adventurous mermaid princess Ariel who, after rescuing the dashing Prince Eric from a shipwreck and developing feelings for the human, becomes resolute in her desire to be with him the world above water. The Little Mermaid live-action remake cast is led by Halle Bailey as Ariel, Jonah Hauer-King as Eric, Javier Bardem as King Triton, and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula.

During a recent interview with Empire, Hauer-King discussed the making of The Little Mermaid live-action version, especially its underwater scenes. In the process, the Eric actor revealed the surprising fact that it was him – and not the mermaid portion of the cast – who spend the most time filming in water. Read what he shared below:

The person that got the wettest in this film, by a country mile, was me! It came from a smart decision [of Rob’s], which is that, as a human, I should be interacting with water as a human would. So, for my stuff – the shipwreck, fights in water – I needed to be wet. Halle and the mermaids can’t interact with water as humans, so they were on blue-screen stages.

The Little Mermaid Is The Latest Blockbuster To Film Underwater

The Little Mermaid live-action remake is the latest of a few recent blockbusters to film underwater, each with their own methods for bringing their aquatic environments to life on screen. Avatar: The Way of Water, which was the highest-grossing movie of 2022, made history as the first film to shoot performance capture scenes underwater. Many of the actors, including Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet, learned to free-dive and hold their breaths underwater for long periods of time, with the Titanic star breaking Tom Cruise’s record for the longest underwater breath hold for a movie.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is another recent blockbuster to heavily feature water, as it introduces the underwater kingdom of Talokan inhabited by blue-skinned, water-breathing superhumans led by Namor. One of the biggest challenges the MCU movie had was making its lavish costumes water-resistant in order to hold up to the heavy amount of underwater filming that occurred. The upcoming DCEU movie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, will be set almost entirely in the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, just like the first film.

The Little Mermaid, which releases in theaters on May 26, is the latest blockbuster to feature an underwater setting. According to Hauer-King, he interacted with actual water the most because he plays a human character, while Bailey and the other mermaid actors shot their underwater scenes on blue-screen stages. Based on The Little Mermaid trailer, the result appears to be some stunning underwater scenes that stack up the recent string of subaquatic blockbusters.

Source: Empire