Harry Styles’ New Video Has Fans Poking Fun At His Little Mermaid Audition

While most of the focus surrounding the casting of the live action adaptation of The Little Mermaid is on lead Halle Bailey, there was just as much interest in who was going to get the role of Prince Eric. While the character is actually a fairly small role in the animated classic, there was an indication he was going to be much bigger as Harry Styles was apparently offered the role.

While Prince Eric is now set to be players by Jonah Hauer-King, Styles fans are now remembering that the singer nearly became part of The Little Mermaid because in his newest music video, for the song “Music For A Sushi Restaurant,” Style actually becomes, well, not a mermaid, but something related.

The new music video puts Harry Styles in the role of some sort of half man, half squid creature, which is at the very least mermaid adjacent. This has fans remarking on Harry Styles having been considered  for The Little Mermaid. The general joke being that Styles didn’t want to play Prince Eric anyway. He actually wanted to play Ariel, or possibly Ursula. To be honest, can you blame him?  Ursula is the best role in the movie.

Back in the summer of 2019 it was reported that Harry Styles had actually been cast as Prince Eric in the live action Little Mermaid. That turners out not to be the case, though Styles did eventually confirm that talks with Disney had happened. It sounds like the role would have been his had he wanted, but the Don’t Worry Darling actor said that he’d wanted to focus on other parts of his career at that time. That included making more music, and apparently playing a fish person in a music video. 

Harry Styles did eventually take a different role under the Disney umbrella. He appeared as Eros in the post credits scene for Marvel Studios’ Eternals. While the future of that role is far from clear right now, odds are it will be a supporting performance that won’t take up too much of his time, allowing him to continue to make music or do whatever else he wants to do.  

We have yet to see Prince Eric in any of the promotional material for The Little Mermaid. Everything so far has focused on Halle Bailey’s Ariel, which has been its own source of a media frenzy. We are expecting Prince Eric’s role to be more significant, and like other Disney’s love interests who never had their own songs in the original animated films, we are fully expecting Prince Eric to sing in the remake.