The Little Mermaid creators Howard Ashman and Alan Menken had originally planned to have Sebastian be English, but they decided an “English butler” would be too stuffy. They moved Sebastian's origins to the Caribbean so that they could credibly have Sebastian sing songs with calypso and reggae rhythms.
Throughout the series, Sebastian's character is further developed via dialogue and entire episodes dedicated to him. In the series, Sebastian is said to have come from a large Jamaican family.
Horatio Thelonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian is a red Jamaican crab and a servant of King Triton, and also his main musical composer. His main song is "Under the Sea".
Why does Sebastian from The Little Mermaid have an accent?
In a tribute to Wright's performance, his crustacean is from the Caribbean too. But the voice has a Trinidadian tinge, influenced by the late playwright Tony Hall, a native of the island, who schooled Diggs on calypso history before he died in 2020.
Patois developed in the 17th century when enslaved people from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned, and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken by the slaveholders: British English, Scots, and Hiberno-English.
Shaggy Reacts To BAD Jamaican Accents In TV And Movies (The Office, The Little Mermaid, Futurama)
What's a Jamaican accent called?
Our Language
Jamaica's official language is English, but we also speak Jamaican or Patois (or Patwa) - a colorful, descriptive and emphatic creole dialect that has been shaped by our African, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English colonial heritage.
Was Sebastian Jamaican in the original Little Mermaid?
Sebastian (full name Horatio Thelonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian) is a red Jamaican crab and one of the main protagonists in Disney's 1989 hit film The Little Mermaid, its prequel film, its TV series, and its sequel.
Sebastian is from Trinidad, not Jamaica. The Little Mermaid creators Howard Ashman and Alan Menken had originally planned to have Sebastian be English, but they decided an “English butler” would be too stuffy.
Sebastian is known as the anxious but proud advisor to King Triton and the court composer (a job which he takes very seriously). Throughout The Little Mermaid, the Jamaican crab had his work cut out for him keeping an eye on Princess Ariel, who was bound and determined to get into trouble.
While it is known that her mother perished, there is no story attached to the event. However, much later, in 2008, an animated The Little Mermaid prequel revealed that Ariel's mother was crushed by a pirate ship during an altercation between humans and merpeople.
In this novel, Ursula is King Triton's younger sister who was betrayed by him as a child for choosing a tentacled form instead of a mermaid's tail, and grew up as a human in the town of Ipswich with an adoptive human father.
In the animated film, Ursula was a villain who enjoyed messing with people and getting what she wanted. In The Little Mermaid live-action, however, Ursula's backstory gets an adjustment — she is upgraded to Triton's sister and Ariel's aunt, making her revenge and motivations all the more sinister.
While some of Sebastian's features resemble a lobster, Sebastian is definitely a crab, as is stated in The Little Mermaid itself a few times. This includes the scene where the obsessed Chef Louis refers to Sebastian as a crab, and since he's a professional, he really should know.
In the series, Sebastian is said to have come from a large Jamaican family. Apparently, Sebastian was born in Jamaica and went to Music Academy in Trinidad prior to joining King Triton's staff as his assistant.
English is the official language of the island, with a distinctive Creole or Caribbean English spoken widely. The English and creole spoken on the island contain elements of Carib, African, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese languages, and reflect the diverse ethnic and linguistic origins of the people.
What accent is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid 2023?
Wright's baritone had a comforting quality that, combined with Sebastian's Jamaican accent, made the character's voice nothing short of iconic. This made Diggs' slightly higher voice—affected with a faux Trinidadian accent instead—seem less authoritative and altogether younger than his predecessor's.
Since the animated feature film had a white mermaid as Ariel, some people are angry that Disney has gone with a black actress in the live-action. Some people also believe that Hans Christian Andersen described the Little mermaid as a white mermaid in his book. Therefore, Disney should have cast a white actress instead.
Diggs was born in Oakland, California, the son of Barbara, a social worker, and Dountes Diggs, a bus driver. His mother is Jewish, and his father is African-American. His parents named him "Daveed", the Hebrew pronunciation of David.
While Ariel is 16 years old in Disney animated The Little Mermaid film, her love interest is not the same age. The character's voice actor, Christopher Daniel Barnes, was just 16 years old at the time of recording the film, leading to the assumption that the character was intended to be the same age.
The word gyal is used in a variety of ways in Jamaican culture. It can be used as an expression of endearment, as in the phrase baby gyal. It can also be used to refer to a woman in a sexual way, or simply to mean girl.
