[Jodi] Benson appears briefly in The Little Mermaid (now playing in theaters) within Queen Selena (Noma Dumezweni) and Prince Eric’s (Jonah Hauer-King) Caribbean kingdom. Having transformed into a human by this point in the film, Ariel (Halle Bailey) explores the land world for the first time and gets lost amid the vendors of a local marketplace.
She stumbles upon a woman, who offers her a plate of food. But wait! She’s going to need something to eat that food. This woman, played by Benson, hands Ariel a fork, which the transformed mermaid then promptly uses to comb her hair. “It’s literally like passing the torch,” Marshall says. In Scuttle speak, it’s like passing the dinglehopper.
