Disney Legend Jodi Benson joining the Walt Disney Family Museum’s Happily Ever After Hours virtual speaker series for a Q&A with fans. Her years on Broadway led to a successful career as a voice artist, beginning with Disney’s The Little Mermaid as the voice of Ariel. She takes her role as Ariel’s ambassador very seriously and loves sharing the character with fans. Here are 10 things we learned from Jodi Benson during the event.
1. Ariel and Belle have been friends for almost 40 years.
Paige O’Hara, who voiced Belle in Beauty and the Beast, surprised Jodi Benson with a painting of Ariel that she made at the D23 Expo. It’s a treasure in Jodi’s home with a place of honor in their dining room where she can see it every day. But Jodi shared that her friendship with Paige actually predates their Disney careers. “I met my husband, we were dating in 1980, and in 1981, my husband did the national tour of Oklahoma and Paige was in that cast,” the voice of Ariel shared. “So he was the standby for Will Parker and she was the standby for Ado Annie, so I met her. That was 1981. That’s how long we’ve been friends… Belle and Ariel are best friends. We’re BFFs.” Click here for our recap of Paige O’Hara’s Happily Ever After Hours event where she talks about painting Ariel for Jodi Benson.
2. She wouldn’t have auditioned for The Little Mermaid if it hadn’t been for Howard Ashman.
“Howard was so kind that when Smile tragically closed so quickly and we were all out of a job, it was nice to invite us to audition for The Little Mermaid,” she shared about the experience of auditioning for Disney. “I just came up with a voice. I went to the ladies room, where all great things can happen, in the restroom, go figure… I made sure no one was in there with me and I looked in the mirror and read some of the lines and came up with something that I thought sounded like a sixteen-year-old.” A year went by and she completely forgot about the audition when her agent called to tell her she booked the part. “Needless to say, a huge blessing and a big surprise.” The memory of the audition is a little hazy, but she believes she was given a piece of “Part of Your World” to sing. “I don’t remember if I just sang it acapella… I don’t remember singing the whole song for some reason, but it’s not like I had an accompaniment track or anything… That was the original audition and it was just incredible.”
3. She thinks of Howard Ashman every time she sings “Part of Your World.”
One of her strongest memories from the recording process on the film was recording “Part of Your World” with Howard Ashman. “Recording ‘Part of Your World’ with Howard Ashman right next to me. That’s very vivid,” she shared about her strong memories of the recording session. “In fact, when I sing the song, I think of that.” She shared that he came into the booth and lowered the lights and talked her into the right mood to get the emotion just right. “I have wonderful, magical memories about recording that song.”
4. Her biggest learning moment in her career was learning to let go during the recording of Mermaid.
“One of the things that I learned that’s made the biggest impact for me happening during Mermaid,” she shared. “I’m a perfectionist and have battled being an extreme perfectionist when it comes to the intricacies of singing, dancing, and acting. Carrying that over into The Little Mermaid wasn’t necessary because I had Howard, who was even more of a perfectionist than I was… For the first time ever, I let go of the control. I had never done that before.” She said that when she’s on stage, she’s the one in control over the final performance, but with voice acting, it’s up to someone else to decide how the performance goes. “When you’re behind a microphone and you’re recording and you’re doing several passes, you have to let it go. You just put the work out there and let it go and you have to trust that the people behind the glass know what they’re doing. That was huge for me.” When recording “Part of Your World,” she was offered the chance to listen to a playback of her takes and she refused, worrying that it would drive her crazy. “That was the first time I’d ever done that. That was a great lesson for me because it has carried into many parts of my life.” She shared that she no longer considers herself a perfectionist, but she does her best with every performance.
5. What it was like for her seeing The Little Mermaid for the first time.
“Like a terrifying roller coaster ride that you’ve never been on and didn’t know what’s about to happen,” she shared about seeing the film for the first time. “It was a screening on the lot… Howard had already told me, you’re probably not going to like Part of Your World.” Howard Ashman didn’t think the passes were good enough and was worried they didn’t get it right. “It started and it was kind of overwhelming, but then as time went on and just as we started to get into ‘Part of Your World,’ I forgot that it was me and I got caught up in the story and in Ariel and all these emotions came up.” She approached directors Ron Musker and John Clements afterwards to share that it must be a good film because she forgot she was part of it while she was watching. “It was so moving, so emotional, so overwhelming.”
6. Jumping from Ariel to Thumbelina.
“It was a Blast,” Jodi shared about her next animated role, the titular Thumbelina in the Don Bluth film for Fox Animation. “I actually did not audition for that. That came straight from Don Bluth blessing me after he’d seen Mermaid. I was really honored.” Surprisingly, people forget that the voice of Ariel also voiced the tiny little squirt. “People ask me all the time if they altered my voice technically and I’m like, no, that’s my voice. I made it sound small, petite, and very very high.” A literal high note of the project was meeting one of her idols, singer/songwriter Barry Manilow. “Walking into the room and meeting Barry Manilow, who I just adored… I walked into the room and he’s at the piano… I had to pull myself together to do my job because I was so awestruck about him… it was an unbelievable experience and it was so much fun.”
7. Mattel Didn’t Know She Voiced Barbie Before Toy Story 2.
“I did not audition for Barbie,” Jodi shared about another iconic role as the fashion doll icon in Pixar’s Toy Story series. “We had Lee [Unkrich] and John Lassiter and they just hired me from The Little Mermaid and I was like, well, what does Barbie sound like? And they said, oh, she’s in there. We know what Ariel sounds like and she’s in there somewhere.” They brought out of box of Barbies for Jodi to play with to help find the voice and a Mattel representative was at Pixar for the recording session. “The Mattle person announced to me, Barbie has never had a voice before, this is the first time. I said, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I actually did the Barbie Dance Workout video for you and I was the first voice of Barbie.” Nobody at Pixar knew about the addition to Jodi’s resume that predates The Little Mermaid. “I haven’t seen this workout video, but somebody has it. It’s a VHS, kind of like claymation. I gave her a voice then and we kind of tweaked it and pitched it up for Toy Story 2 and 3.”
8. She hadn’t heard of Patrick Dempsey when she made Enchanted.
“Kevin [Lima], of course, was an animator for The Little Mermaid, so we had that connection with each other and this whole concept of sticking the princesses into Enchanted was an inside joke,” Jodi shared about her first on-screen role in a live-action film. “It was supposed to be like Where’s Waldo with hide and seek. This is embarrassing but I didn’t know who Patrick McDreamy was,” she shared about her embarrassing moment meeting co-star Patrick Dempsey of ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy fame. “So I thought I was going to do a scene with Patrick Duffy from Dallas, which I was very excited about because I love that show… In walks this guy who does not look like Patrick Duffy… I was slightly disappointed, but in walks this other gentleman and we’re in this glass office building in Manhattan, there’s 35 floors of glass and everywhere you look there’s women pressed against the glass looking and waving and staring… I asked this guy, Patrick Dempsey, what is going on? And he’s like, “They’re kind of here for me.” She had to ask the actor why so many women know who he is. “We both had kids, we were talking about our kids and I didn’t know who he was… So we just had a lot of fun and then it ended up they kind of made my little character a little more and they had me come back again. And. of course, Amy [Adams] was just delightful to work with.” Kevin Lima talked about working with Jodi Benson during his Happily Ever After Hours event. Click here for our recap.
9. The last minute technical difficulty that made her blackout during ABC’s The Little Mermaid Live.
“I had such a blast with that cast and watched every rehearsal and that was a crazy fun event,” Jodi Benson shared about ABC’s live television tribute to The Little Mermaid. “Long story short, I had a lovely little intro all memorized and I had shot it the day before, which was not to be live… So when it was the live event, I actually did come out to share some stories.” During the taping, Jodi was going to be a special treat for the live studio audience, but wasn’t expecting to be seen by millions of viewers around the world at that same moment. A stage manager ran up to her 90-seconds before going live. “He goes ‘Jodi, I need to tell you something. We have misplaced your prerecorded tape. The technical directors will not be able to pull it up.” They asked her if she still remembered the script from the day prior and she had forgotten it. The stage manager handed her a copy and she had about a minute to get it back into her head as they pointed out the cameras she should look at and when. “I’m literally about to throw up, so I’m just smiling and then they go ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1’ I have no recollection and the next thing I’m down in the audience holding the stage manager’s hand… I just blacked out. I have no recollection.” Later that night at a cast party, she couldn’t believe that she didn’t mess up the lines. “Live TV, it was petrifying.”
10. Joining the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We’re going through so much here in Atlanta and here in Georgia and it’s just so heartbreaking,” Jodi Benson shared about standing up to racism. Her kids are home from college and they’ve been supporting the movement as a family. “I’ve been going to all of the protests and rallies with them.” Her filmmaker son has been selecting movies to watch each night that teach her more about living as a Black person in the US and she’s been reading a lot of books. “We’re really learning how to listen, but it’s just an unbelievable time. But what we’re learning throughout the day as a family is we need to find the joy of the day. We need to find time to play a game and to laugh… How do you have your heart break for your friends and your family that are going through so much trauma right now and find the joy of today? It’s complicated, but we’re trying to walk this line. Now more than ever, we’re trying to savor the moments of the day. Find time as a family, pray together, grieve together, rally around our friends and family and see how we can be part of the change. We’re excited as a family to see that we can have both. We have to have hope.”
Fans can see the full schedule of Walt Disney Family Museum virtual events, including the Happily Ever After Hours speaker series, at waltdisney.org/calendar.