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Ah, Prince Eric! That dimples and those big blue eyes, ugh! While most people are concerned about the skin color of a mythological creature, let’s chat about one of the best parts of The Little Mermaid, THE MUSIC!! Just announced today is a brand new song for Prince Eric and more background on his character.
First off, Prince Eric is played by Jonah Hauer-King. He’s 27 years old and originally from London. According to his Wikipedia page, he has a degree in theology and religious studies.
Entertainment Weekly shares: “Eric feels a kindred soul within Ariel, and his life on land is a mirror of her own under the sea. Like the mermaid, the prince has a single parent of a different ethnicity: Queen Selina, a new character added to this version, played by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child‘s Noma Dumezweni. “It’s a lovely balance,” Dumezweni remarks. “It’s the sense of these babies being two outsiders of their origin story.”
They continue: “Eric also shares Ariel’s thirst for adventure, which hasn’t been quenched inside the walls of his island castle. In a new ballad, “Wild Uncharted Waters,” Hauer-King sings of Eric’s struggle to find himself amid the familial pressures of becoming the kingdom’s future ruler. “He wants to see the other edge of that horizon line, wherever it may lead,” says the song’s lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who worked with 1989 Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken on a total of three new songs for the live-action movie, including Ariel’s “For the First Time” and “Scuttlebutt” for the seagull Scuttle and crab Sebastian, voiced by Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs. (Menken’s original Little Mermaid collaborator, Disney legend Howard Ashman, sadly died in 1991 during the making of Beauty and the Beast.) “Eric is endlessly drawn to the sea and Ariel’s endlessly drawn to land,” Miranda continues. “So where does that get us?””
