CULTURE

Lindsay Lohan Cannot Believe She Was Passed Over for The Little Mermaid Casting Yet Again

It's the role she was born to play!

April 4, 2019

Nathan Congleton/NBC/Getty Images

At this point, it’s getting a little bit ridiculous that actress extraordinaire Lindsay Lohan has yet to be offered the role she was so clearly born to play: Ariel from The Little Mermaid, of course—have you seen her red hair?! This ongoing travesty was further magnified earlier this week, when the Hollywood Bowl announced that in this year’s back-to-back live performances of the Disney film, the titular role will go not to the entrepreneur-activist-designer-singer who deserves it most, but rather to one Lea Michele, whose hair isn’t even close to red.

The 2019 installment of the Hollywood Bowl’s annual adaptation of The Little Mermaid — the first was staged in 2016, with Sara Bareilles in the lead role — would’ve been an especially meaningful setting for Lohan to make her debut as Ariel, since it’ll mark the 30th anniversary of the release of the animated film. But alas, she was passed over, and has just one word for whoever was responsible for the casting fiasco: “Huh?” she commented on a post from fan account @thedisneyprincesses announcing the Hollywood Bowl performances’ cast. Huh, indeed.

Lohan has been the opposite of shy when it comes to expressing her fervent desire to slip into Ariel’s fins. In a 2016 interview with a Turkish news channel, she stated that she wouldn’t be done with acting until she’d appeared in The Little Mermaid, and a few weeks later, she posted a (since-deleted) photo of her mermaid muse on Instagram, writing “My dream role,” and tagging both Disney and Disney Pictures Film in a not-so-subtle hint. More recently, in late 2018, LiLo went a step further, sharing a photo of Ariel and the villainous sea witch Ursula on her Instagram Story, tagging Disney Pictures Film once again, and writing, “My dream role with Meryl Streep.”

And in January 2019, fresh on the heels of that incredible pitch, Lohan spoke to Variety about her undying love for the 1989 classic. “The Little Mermaid is my favorite movie since I was a kid. Whenever I put that movie on, it makes me happy. I’m like, ‘Everybody, stop. Watch this movie,'” she said. Of her continued non-casting in the role, she added: “I’m going to harass my agent about it after this.”