Yara Shahidi on why playing Tinker Bell is 'really surreal and full circle'
Yara Shahidi knows that being the first Black actor to play Tinker Bell is bigger than just her.
The "Black-ish" actress opened up on "Good Morning America" Monday about playing the beloved Disney character in the live-action film "Peter Pan & Wendy," premiering Friday, April 28, on Disney+.
"To be a part of not only this movie but really a movement of so many fairy tales being retold to look like our world is exciting because those are the first stories we hear growing up," she said.
Shahidi, 23, called it "really surreal and full circle" for her to be playing such an iconic Disney character as Tinker Bell, especially because some of her first jobs were in ads for the company.
"I would dress up as the princesses and different characters but I was always the Black version of a character because none of them looked like me," she recalled.
When preparing for the role, Shahidi said she looked to performers like the late Josephine Baker as inspiration for developing Tinker Bell's "whole visual language."
"A lot of her performances are things that me and the director [David Lowery] looked at because she's so expressive with saying no words," she explained. "And that was kind of the challenge of playing Tinker Bell, just chiming in fairy language the whole time."
This role also brought about the second doll inspired by Shahidi, following her voting-themed Barbie launched in 2019 as part of Mattel's Shero program, celebrating notable women making a positive change in the world.
"I think that's something that's so cool because ... that gets brought into the home," she said of her new Tinker Bell doll. "That's what made it really real for me ... because that lives on. I don't know if I've processed what it will be like to see people with little Tinker Bells."
"Peter Pan & Wendy" premieres Friday, April 28, on Disney+.
Disney is the parent company of ABC News and "Good Morning America."
