Noma Dumezweni joins cast of ‘The Little Mermaid’ live-action film

She'll join Halle Bailey, Daveed Diggs, and Melissa McCarthy in a brand-new role in the highly-anticipated flick

Jan 6, 2021

Noma Dumezweni is joining the cast of Disney’s live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid.

According to Deadline, the actress who made quite the impact as lawyer Haley Fitzgerald on HBO’s limited series The Undoing will play a brand new character that was not in the 1989 animated original.

The 51-year-old Brit joins Halle Bailey who will star as Ariel and Melissa McCarthy who snagged the role of the villainous sea witch, Ursula. Daveed Diggs has signed on as Sebastian and Javier Bardem will play King Triton.

Rob Marshall is directing The Little Mermaid which will be written by David Magee. The film includes the beloved songs from the animated Disney flick as well as some new offerings from Alan Menken with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

This won’t be the first time Dumezweni has signed on to a Disney project as she previously appeared in the 2018 film Mary Poppins Returns.

Noma Domazweni Little Mermaid thegrio.com — Noma Dumezweni of ‘The Undoing’ appears onstage during the HBO segment of the 2020 Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for WarnerMedia)

While plenty of people are just now discovering the actress, she has a lot of roles under her belt already. She earned a Tony nomination for playing Hermione Granger in the original West End and Broadway productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and appeared in titles like Dirty Pretty Things, Normal People, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

While we wait to see if her performance alongside Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant in The Undoing earns her the recognition she deserves when awards season rolls around, she already has several other projects on the horizon.

Next up will be her HBO series Made For Love, based on the 2017 novel by Alissa Nutting.

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