While Harris points out there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s something to be said for how the film’s hairstyles - intrinsically tied to Black culture - were allowed to flourish. In the 90s, Norwood often wore her hair in braids, most notably as the lead in her sitcom “Moesha.” For “Cinderella,” producers let her wear her hair the way she liked to, which Harris says made a huge difference.Īcross media, Black girls often wear their hair straightened. Houston had voluminous honey-brown curls. The film was a huge deal back then and still is today, Harris says.Ī pivotal aspect of the film is that Norwood wore braids. Harris was 8 years old when the film came out and remembers watching it with her mother on VHS.
“It very much was such a groundbreaking thing to see as a little Black girl when Disney had plenty of princesses, but none of them had been Black up until that point,” says Aisha Harris, co-host of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Others like Theuri were also enchanted to see Disney’s first Black princess on screen, long before Tiana of “The Princess and the Frog” in 2009. “To see a Black woman in this fairy tale story and just knowing that you as a Black girl could also live your own kind of fairy tale and fantasy, and you could have a really beautiful life and fall in love and be adored by the world, that's the message that I got as a little young girl watching this,” says Here & Now senior editor Ciku Theuri. To commemorate the anniversary, ABC will rebroadcast the film along with a cast reunion Tuesday. Now, 25 years later, the film remains a cultural mainstay.
#Black cinderella tv
When Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s TV film “Cinderella” debuted on ABC in 1997, millions were enraptured by the iconic performances of Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother and Brandy Norwood in the title role. Brandy as Cinderella in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1997 film.
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