Daveed Diggs has admitted the pressure of trying to live up to expectations with The Little Mermaid remake was “nerve-wracking”.

The Hamilton star voices the crab Sebastian in Rob Marshall’s remake of Disney’s beloved 1989 animation alongside live-action stars Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, and Javier Bardem.

Daveed recently admitted that he felt pressure to live up to the original but insisted that the whole filmmaking team cared so much about doing the story justice with the new reimagining.

“It was really nerve-wracking,” he told reporters at the film’s premiere in London. “Everybody who was working on this is such a big fan of the original so we got to say, ‘If we love this movie, then we know we’re going to do it justice.”

The voice actors recorded their lines with their co-stars on set instead of in a booth on their own, and Daveed enjoyed being able to play around with his character.

“Rob and the whole crew did such a great job of making it a place where we could make things our own and feel free to play,” he praised.

When asked how he attempted to embody a crab, the 41-year-old joked, “It starts with a lot of diaphragm exercises, you got to get yourself really close to the ground and centred, you got to do a lot of breath work because underwater… no, honestly, mostly for me, I spent a lot of time with Awkwafina (the voice of Scuttle) in the creation for the roles so it’s mostly just trying to keep up with her.”

The Little Mermaid is in cinemas now.

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