Tiana is a fictional character in Walt Disney Pictures' animated film The Princess and the Frog (2009). Created by writers and directors Ron Clements and John Musker and animated by Mark Henn, Tiana, as an adult, is voiced by Anika Noni Rose, while Elizabeth M. Dampier voices the character as a child.
Anika Noni Rose as Tiana, an African American 19-year-old waitress and aspiring chef / restaurateur. She is an intelligent, hardworking, and independent young woman but works so hard that she often forgets about other things in life such as love, fun, and family. Mark Henn was the supervising animator for Tiana.
In Disney's nearly 100-year history, there has been only one Black Disney princess — Princess Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog,” a 2009 animated feature starring Anika Noni Rose.
What is the black representation in The Princess and the Frog?
In The Princess and the Frog, the Black characters are presented as physically unappealing animals (e.g., frogs, alligators, and insects), and are therefore meant to be perceived as subhuman.
Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose will portray the first Afro-Latina princess. The trailer for Disney's latest animation film, Wish, is here, and we're already in love with the leading princess, voiced by West Side Story Academy Award-winning actress Ariana DeBose.
In fact, there were also a significant number of Black commenters calling it Disney's "lazy" attempt at on-screen representation, with one person writing, "The reason studios make beloved characters black in the live action adaptations is so they don't have to go to the trouble of actually giving special, brand new ...
His skin is brown, but he isn't African-American. "A lot of moms had issues with that," Coleman said. "It felt like it was a slap in the face to black men." Coleman asked a Disney executive if Prince Naveen was Creole and was told that his background was made up; he's whatever ethnicity they have in fictional Maldonia.
At some point, James was possibly killed in action (K.I.A.) during the war, so he probably never got to see Tiana get her restaurant. As shown briefly in the film, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (given for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force).
Tiana is recognized for being Disney's first African American princess. As the film's writers and directors, Clements and Musker claim that their decision to depict Tiana as an African American young woman came naturally simply as a result of the location in which the story takes place.
One thing to note, Hans Christian Andersen left out race, skin color, and character names. For the animated movie, Disney made the little mermaid white, made her hair red, and gave her a name, Ariel.
On the significance of casting a Black actress as Ariel
Sherri Hope Culver: To have a Disney character who is not just a princess but a live-action, real flesh and blood person that children can be inspired by is important. This is because people of color are less likely to see themselves reflected in the media.
There were still complaints over Princess Tiana's love interest: The frog prince is not Black. Truth be told, throughout much of the movie he and his fair lady are frogs. He has a Middle Eastern name, Naveen, is voiced by a Brazilian actor, Bruno Campos, and comes from a made up place, Maldonia.
While some claim Jasmine is Arab because the movie opens with a song called Arabian Nights, others believe that the architecture in Agrabah is clearly based on the Taj Mahal, making Jasmine Indian. It's a debate that has fueled speculation that in Hollywood, Indians and Arabs are interchangeable.
Pin for Later: 21 Disney Prince Facts You Never Knew as a Kid Prince Naveen is the only prince to have a non-American accent. He is from the fictional kingdom of Maldonia, and voice actor Bruno Campos ad-libbed the accent as a combination of Portuguese and French.
Of course, the animated mermaids are the daughters of King Triton and Queen Athena, but that may change in the live-action version with the implication that Ariel's sisters have different mothers.
Ariel is widely viewed as a male character, although this view has wavered over the years, especially in the Restoration when, for the most part, women played the role.
Naveen or Navin (Sanskrit: नवीन, IAST: navīna; /nəˈviːn/ na-VEEN) is an Indian male given name and surname. The word means "new", "fresh", "young", "bright", "creative". Naveen is chiefly used in Indian languages, and its origin is Sanskrit.
The character Prince Naveen from Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" is a fictional character, and his ethnicity is depicted as Maldonian, which is a fictional country in the movie. Maldonia is not associated with any real-world ethnicity or race.
Naveen and Tiana's dream come true. Following these events, Naveen and Tiana are married by Mama Odie in the bayous where Louis, the firefly family and many other bayous animals attend their wedding.
However, Tinker Bell was removed so she could lead her own franchise as a Disney fairy, and through that, she got to star in a couple of movies. Other characters were considered to be part of the Disney Princesses franchise but didn't make it, as were Enchanted's Giselle, Tarzan's Jane, and Frozen's Anna and Elsa.
In Esmeralda's case, the reason was that the sales of The Hunchback of Notre Dame products were not going as Disney had hoped, and the character was not as popular with the audience. Tinker Bell's situation was quite different because she was removed so that she could star in her own franchise known as Disney Fairies.
