You’ll probably know Halle Bailey best for two things: her role as Ariel in Disney’s 2023 live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, and appearing in the visual album for Lemonade by Beyoncé, who she also supported on tour as part of musical sister duo Chloe x Halle. The pair first found an audience on YouTube, and have since been nominated for five Grammys.
Bailey was only 19 when she was cast in The Little Mermaid, thanks due what director Rob Marshall described as her “otherworldly sensibility”. Of course the internet quickly found something to complain about, with much of the backlash going beyond the absence of cartoony bright red hair. “I expected it, honestly,” she told the Guardian. “We’re all human beings, so of course it’s going to hurt or sting a little bit, especially remarks like those.”
Since then, Bailey has starred as the romantic interest in 2023 coming-of-age drama The Line, and as the younger version of Nettie in the 2023 musical remake of The Color Purple, continuing to build a film career alongside her music. She now stars in romantic comedy You, Me & Tuscany, as a young cook who squats in an abandoned Tuscan villa owned by a man she barely knows, and then meets – and presumably falls for – the owner’s cousin, played by Regé-Jean Page from Bridgerton and Waterloo Road.
Now Bailey is here to take your questions, so please post them below by 6pm on Tuesday 24 March, and we’ll print her answers shortly afterwards in Film & Music and online.
• You, Me & Tuscany is in cinemas on 10 April