13 Reasons Why's Christian Navarro calls out Disney for casting a white actor as Prince Eric
14 November 2019, 15:02
Christian Navarro is one of the many actors who auditioned to play The Little Mermaid role before Jonah Hauer-King was cast.
13 Reasons Why star Christian Navarro has criticised Disney for choosing a white actor for Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid.
In 2016, Disney confirmed that they would be remaking The Little Mermaid as a live-action film. Since then, they've revealed that 19-year-old singer and actress Halle Bailey will be playing the lead role of Ariel and Melissa McCarthy will star as iconic villain Ursula. This year, huge names including Harry Styles, Gavin Leatherwood and Christian Navarro were all attached to the role of Prince Eric. However, this week (Nov 12), Disney revealed that newcomer Jonah Hauer-King has got the part.
READ MORE: Christian Navarro reveals he auditioned for Prince Eric in the Little Mermaid live-action remake
In response to the news, Christian has called out Disney for not choosing an actor of colour to take on the role.
Taking to Instagram stories, Christian posted a photo of Jonah, and the cartoon version of Prince Eric, with a lengthy caption expressing his disappointment in Disney for not branching out at all.
Christian wrote: "Literally @disney saw a who's who list of actors of color [sic] and STILL went with the white guy. So much for diversity. I guess two brown leads would have tanked the movie right? Boring."
Eric is white in the original animated film but The Little Mermaid is a fairytale and, as Christian said, it would have been exciting to see Disney further diversify the film. Disney received overwhelming praise in July when they confirmed that Halle Bailey, a black actress, would be starring as Ariel and fans were excited to see actors of colour in the running to play Eric too.
