At the beginning of July, it was announced that Halle Bailey will be playing the titular role of Ariel in Disney's upcoming, live-action remake of
The Little Mermaid. With the character typically being portrayed having white skin, this inevitably led to some controversy as the actress chosen to play her in the remake isn't white - shock horror!
However, a recent survey done by
The Hollywood Reporter has found that the majority of people are wholly in support of Bailey playing Ariel despite their disparate skin colour.
2,200 people participated in this survey and 58% of them were for the casting decision. 60% of Generation Z voters and 75% of Democratic were in favour of Halle Bailey. Millenials and Generation X were just under 60% in terms of those in support. However, Baby Boomers were split on the choice of actress (with 50% for and against) and only 44% of Republican voters were in support.
Interestingly, the survey also took note of whether its participants had even heard about the apparent controversy. Only 20% of voters said that they had heard much about the controversy, while 31% claim to have not heard about it at all.
Below you can see the bar chart that THR put together to represent their survey's results: