“I begged your niece for an autograph.”
Menken describes it as “lilting.”
Miranda suggested he slow down the tempo and throw on a dancehall beat.
Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric and Halle Bailey as Ariel in ‘The Little Mermaid’.Giles Keyte/Disney
The pair tease a bit of the song on the piano, as shown in the exclusive video above.
Menken says the musical sequence involves multiple stops as Ariel adjusts to life on land.
“She’s wondering all these things about what life on land is.
Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric in ‘The Little Mermaid’.Giles Keyte/Disney
but it’s cool ‘cause she’s singing more throughout this version,” Bailey teases.
“Wild Uncharted Waters” was one way to explore more of these layers.
“We took our cues from David’s script.
Daveed Diggs, who voices Sebastian in ‘The Little Mermaid,’ records the song “Scuttlebutt” with the film’s lyricist (and his former ‘Hamilton’ costar) Lin-Manuel Miranda.Giles Keyte/Disney
What he’s done with Eric is made him an explorer,” Miranda explains.
He wants to see the other edge of that horizon line wherever it may lead him.
He’s endlessly drawn to the sea and [Ariel’s] endlessly drawn to land.
So where does that get us?"
He doesn’t yet know she’s a mermaid.
He just knows some mystery woman saved his life, and he yearns to find her.
Hauer-King feels audiences will understand Eric more fully from this song.
“It’s so in Lin’s wheelhouse,” Menken mentions.
Menken calls “Scuttlebutt” a work of “accidental art.”
It further evolved as Menken and Miranda worked with the actors.
“It would just be an extra little button, a little extra icing on the cake.
So I was like, ‘Let me think of some things that they could rap really fast.'”
“It’s the most deliciously ADHD runaway train of thought,” Miranda adds.
“There’s tangents inside of tangents.”
Read Little Mermaidin EW’s cover storywith Marshall and his cast.
The film opens in theaters May 26.
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