The unmistakable voice of crusty crustacean Sebastian from Disney’s The Little Mermaid has died. Two-time Tony nominated actor Samuel E. Wright passed away on Monday night after a three-year battle with prostate cancer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Long before diving “Under the Sea,” Wright made a name for himself on Broadway, appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971, and replacing Ben Vereen in Pippin in 1972. Over the years, he was nominated for two Tony awards for his roles in The Tap Dance Kid (1984) and as the original Mufasa in the Broadway adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King (1998). He also played jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie in Clint Eastwood’s 1988 Charlie Parker biopic, Bird, and voiced a CGI iguanadon in Disney’s Dinosaur (2000).
But Wright was probably best known to a couple generations of kids as the voice of Sebastian, the tiny red crab reluctantly tasked with keeping Ariel out of trouble in The Little Mermaid (1989), the film that jumpstarted what is known as the Disney Renaissance of the early 90s. Both the songs he performed in the film were nominated for Oscars, with the Caribbean inflected “Under the Sea” winning the award for Best Original Song.
Wright reprised the role in various straight-to-video sequels, Saturday morning cartoons, and video games over the subsequent two decades. He also released a pair of kids’ albums, performing various calypso and island-influenced songs in character. I vividly remember listening to Disney’s Sebastian: Party Gras! on summer road trips as a kid. To this day, I still associate “Hot Hot Hot” with Wright’s cartoon crab.
In 1991, around the release of Party Gras!, Wright told The Los Angeles Times that he brought the same commitment to voicing Sebastian that he would to playing Othello. “You don’t know what people are going to judge you by,” he said. “If I didn’t want to be immortal I wouldn’t be acting. I do want to make my little mark on the world.”
