We Need To Talk About Gabriella
I've shared my love of Disney's animated Little Mermaid series on here many times in the past. My favorite episode of the show is called "Wish Upon a Starfish." In it, Ariel meets a deaf mermaid named Gabriella, and they go on a quest together to find a magic wishing starfish so Ariel can have legs to dance and Gabriella can have a voice to sing. The episode contained one of the best songs from the series, "Daring to Dance," and has a fascinating backstory behind it. Gabriella was not selected at random to give Ariel another mermaid to be friends with. She was actually based on a two-year-old girl, who was one of the show's biggest fans, named Gabriella Angelina Bommino . When the episode went into production, Gabriella was dying of leukemia. Through the Make a Wish Foundation , the Disney animators designed a mermaid based on Gabriella's image to show her family what she would have looked like if she hadn't passed away so tragically young....