The star of “The Scuttlebutt” and a breakout character for the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, Scuttle has been everyone’s favorite wise-cracking bird since 1989. Back then, he was voiced by the late Buddy Hackett. In fact, Hackett’s return as Scuttle for The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea marked his final film role before he died of complications from heart disease in 2003.
Twenty years post-Hackett, Scuttle has been reimagined with a new look and a new voice — a female one at that. And who provides that voice? None other than Awkwafina, whose real name is Nora Lum.
Awkwafina rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song “My Vag” became popular on YouTube. Ever since, she’s made a name for herself in the acting industry, starring in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and even the insanely popular comedy-romance Crazy Rich Asians.
In the 1989 original movie, Scuttle is a seagull. In Rob Marshall’s live-action adaptation, Scuttle’s character design was changed to a Northern gannet, a species of bird that can remain underwater for up to 30 seconds while hunting for prey. The justification for the swap could be the amount of underwater scenes featuring Ariel and Scuttle that wouldn’t be possible for a seagull.
Marshall explains the change to The News International, saying it aligns with Ariel’s story.
“After she sings ‘Part of Your World’ and she goes [to the surface] for the first time, it’s so shocking and so thrilling. It’s better storytelling.
But then I realized, well, Scuttle, how does she know everything that’s up there? We decided to make her a diving bird so that she could come down and Ariel could meet Scuttle in the water and get all that information there, not above.”
Not everyone was sold on Awkwafina’s addition to the cast, but “depending on personal preference, her duet rap song with Daveed Diggs — “The Scuttlebutt” — is undeniably catchy, whether you love it or hate it.