LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – With a curly-coiffed afro, a stylish, flowy cream pantsuit and bright, can’t-miss-them red shoes, actor Jenifer Lewis was in familiar form.
If you know Lewis — and we all know Lewis — you know her to be the industry-coronated mother of Black Hollywood. You likely will hear her before you see her, given that recognizable, deep-textured voice that scream-shouts joy in every room she enters. She is the party.
But on this night, in a room filled with Black journalists and influencers on a backstage space at Epcot at Walt Disney World, Lewis is Mama Odie, the Black priestess she voiced nearly 15 years ago in Disney’s animated movie The Princess and the Frog. You know the film. It’s the one that finally — FINALLY — gave us the first and so far the only Black princess, the only Disney princess who wasn’t born into royalty or groomed or magic-spelled or wished or potioned into the high life because she wanted it.
Princess Tiana is the dreamer who tosses her coins into old Bissmans Coffee canisters after working tirelessly as a waitress at Duke’s Cafe so that she can achieve the true American dream: entrepreneurship and self-sustainability. She’s a brown-skinned Black girl who grew up in 1920s New Orleans – and we all know what existing in the American South during the Jim Crow era means — who can whip up a pot of gumbo that will bring everyone in the all-Black neighborhood to her front porch for a bowl. (And later, everyone would come to obsess over her beloved beignets.)
She would – after kissing the right frog who “aha!” actually was a prince – become the only Disney princess who works outside of the castle because she is – snaps fingers – a woman who wanted to get it on her own.
In Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, Tiana is throwing a party during Mardi Gras, and riders on the attraction are taken on a ride down the bayou.
Olga Thompson
And on this balmy night – a night where Central Florida’s humidity reigned supreme in the battle against edge control — Lewis, who in the animated film voices the eccentric voodoo priestess who possesses the good magic, is in real life scream-shouting the Gospel moments after she sings her character’s epic song “Dig A Little Deeper.” In one unscripted, unfiltered, blissful realization, she delivered a Word: “We got a ride at Disney, y’all!”
So this isn’t about a theme park attraction at an amusement park. This is way bigger.
This is about Walt Disney World, America’s most beloved amusement park – a place that is billed by its visitors and marketers as the most magical place on Earth (Disneyland Park in California is the happiest place on Earth) – immersing its millions of visitors each year in rich, deep, delicious and beautiful Bayou-kissed Southern Black culture. And the new ride, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, comes at a time when anti-Blackness is front and center in ways that haven’t existed since, well, since Princess Tiana was whipping up those powdered sugar-dusted, deep-fried delicacies in 1927.
“It’s bigger than me,” said Anika Noni Rose, the actor and songstress who voices Princess Tiana. “It’s everything that my grandmother fought for and pushed for. It is my grandmother’s sister casting the first Black vote in Tallahassee, Florida. It is the noise that I’ve encountered in my life.
“It is being told at 14 that I couldn’t be a model because my butt was too big and my thighs were too big and my lips were too big … all the things that people are augmenting at this point in time. It is all of that.”
But, Rose told me, it’s also a reminder that she gets to leave something behind. It’s legacy work.
It’s a legacy that will enable anyone – who, like her and so many of us who have been othered – to see themselves and feel a sense of belonging. And at the happiest place on Earth, at that.
“It is everlasting in a way that I am not as a human being. It will live when I’m gone. It will teach when I cannot. It will speak without words,” she said. “It is a blessing to be an honor, and I’m thoroughly honored to have this be something that I leave behind, that I was a part of.”
The journey of this ride began about six or seven years ago, though fans of the fictional The Princess and the Frog film had been asking for such a presence for years before that.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure picks up where the movie left off. Tiana has turned a salt mine into Tiana’s Foods, where she sells vinegar peppers, chili peppers and her own hot sauce.
Olga Thompson
During an event last week to trumpet the coming of the ride, which will open June 28 in Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World and later this year at Disneyland Park, Rose mentioned that she had read direct messages from people imploring her to help bring to life such an attraction, but she had no power.
Carmen Smith, the Black female executive who carries the weighty title of senior vice president, creative development for content and product for Disney Experiences, Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Consumer Products and Disney Live Entertainment and Disney Signature Experience, connected with the Chase family in New Orleans and inspiration grew. It was a quick, easy and special partnership.
Leah Chase, who died in 2019 at 96 years old, was the famous New Orleans chef who inspired Princess Tiana’s story. Chase was regarded as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine” and ran the historic New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase, which besides serving staples such as Creole gumbo, Southern fried chicken and praline bread pudding, was also a civil rights hub in the 1960s.
“One of the things my grandparents – my grandmother particularly – would say, is we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo,” Chase’s granddaughter Myla Reese Poree said. “It’s all about bringing people to the table. You may have many differences, but when you come to the table, it’s about the food, it’s about the culture, it’s about the community. And I think Tiana speaks to that.
‘When you [see]Tiana, the first African American princess, [you see yourself]. And so that means so much to so many people, especially the young Black girls, that they can actually see themselves in Tiana. That was another part of my grandmother’s legacy: to know that you can do it no matter who you are, no matter your background. You are special. She would say, ‘You’re the pride.’ ”
It’s that spirit of ancestral obligation that drove so much of this project, especially at this time in American history.
In 2020, before the world changed early that spring because of the coronavirus pandemic, Charita Carter was finishing up work on Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway in Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida.
On her flight back home to Los Angeles, she was having an inner conversation with herself and realized: She wanted something more.
Carter, the creative executive producer for Walt Disney Imagineering – which is a very Disney way of saying she’s the boss of some of the most imaginative creators anywhere — was thinking about how much time she spent away from home. She wanted to impact the world far beyond the universal joy one gets when visiting an amusement park. She wanted something more meaningful.
Carter has been at Disney for 27 years, but when she got knee-deep into the creative execution of the ride that would become Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, it was in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder by police and the global civil rights activation it reignited. It was crystallized in her then and there that this was an opportunity to make good on the conversation she’d had with herself earlier that year on that flight back home.
“I was like, ‘I feel like because of my work schedule, I’ve lost a little connection with my community.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘I have got to figure out a way that I can get plugged back in.’ Because it’s life-giving. And then with the pandemic and being shut-in, we were all there together. And I got a renewed appreciation for the importance of my community,” she said, sitting just steps away from the water ride she and a team primarily made up of Black artists and creatives put together.
“This opportunity now to present something to the world that speaks to our fans worldwide, but especially it speaks to our communities … it meant everything to me.”
Princess Tiana, the daughter of a seamstress and a serviceman, sings an anthem of independence in the animated 1920s world akin to what Destiny’s Child did in the early 2000s.
Music has been instrumental in feeding the soul of Black folks since we were in bondage. It has been the source of encouragement, it has been the expression of joy and, of course, it was the music that soundtracked the road to freedom.
And music is key in Princess Tiana’s story, so a new song was written for this next chapter. “Special Spice!,” the new track that Rose’s vocals dance over, brought New Orleans native son PJ Morton to the party. The five-time Grammy winner and Morehouse alum — Rose is a Florida A&M alum — drafted a song that reflects this next section of Princess Tiana’s life.
Picking up where the movie left off, she has now transformed that old sugar mill into her beloved Tiana’s Palace restaurant. She has taken her entrepreneurial dreams to new heights because she also has turned a salt mine into Tiana’s Foods, where she sells canned and jarred deliciousness like vinegar peppers, chili peppers and her own hot sauce.
On the ride, Princess Tiana is throwing a party during Mardi Gras and riders on the attraction are taken on a ride down the bayou. It’s this rich tradition of Black music that treats the ears of riders as they’re guided through the visuals of old New Orleans swamps and cityscapes and scenes of primarily brown puppet people just about everywhere.
In Walt Disney World’s new attraction, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, Princess Tiana has now transformed that old sugar mill into her beloved Tiana’s Palace restaurant.
Olga Thompson
“I’m a Black man and a proud Black man. To have this opportunity and be representing this I take it as an honor, and I take it as a responsibility,” Morton told me. “First Black princess in general but then first Black person on an attraction at Disney World? Disney is such an institution. So I mean, shout-out to them for saying, ‘We’re not just going to do a temporary something.’
“This is a legacy play. This is something that will last decades. It’ll change a generation seeing this ride and seeing that representation. We don’t even know now how much this is going to affect a generation, but I am proud and understand the weight of that.”
His new song with Rose reflects the spirit of what we’re seeing along the way: a community working in concert with one another.
The sights and sounds and smells – you can actually smell freshly fried beignets in Tiana’s kitchen – are Black, beautiful and bold.
And the soundtrack of jazz music, the music that was born in New Orleans and helped to culturally transform the country in the 1920s, bounces throughout the water ride. Legendary composer and New Orleans native Terence Blanchard, who has created the music for more than 40 films, including collaborations with filmmaker Spike Lee, said as culturally specific as this film – and now this amusement park attraction – is, the story of perseverance and hope and having dreams and moving forward is very universal.
“There’s nothing more American than Disney,” Blanchard said. “[This] really acknowledges all of the efforts of all of our civil rights leaders in the past … because the only thing we wanted was to be accepted. We weren’t asking for preferential treatment. We just wanted to be treated just like anybody else. And to have this ride here that can hopefully shape the minds of the little kids, young people, to see themselves here and understand their worth in the world is something that’s beyond priceless.”
The night after Lewis’ performance, she was back in animated, joyful form.
Earlier that day she took her first ride on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and went viral for the cellphone footage of her sitting in the log flume of the ride, shortly before takeoff, once again singing with fans Mama Odie’s “Dig A Little Deeper.”
This is fantastic. Jenifer Lewis (Mama Odie) sings “Dig a Little Deeper” with guests while riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) June 10, 2024
The joy on her face was magnetic. And the firmness of her voice, when I asked her about that unscripted moment of celebration from the night earlier, was direct.
“Let’s just get to the point of it. Even Disney knew it was a time,” she told me. “Everybody knows it’s time. It’s time for women. It’s time for brown people. And this place that they call the happiest place in the world, how you can say that and everybody’s not represented is a crock.”
Then she paused, letting her words hang over me before smiling and finishing with a slight tilt of her head: “So here we are.”
Kelley L. Carter is a senior entertainment reporter and the host of Another Act at Andscape. She can act out every episode of the U.S. version of The Office, she can and will sing the Michigan State University fight song on command and she is very much immune to Hollywood hotness.
