The "Hamilton" actor stars as Sebastian, who sings one of the musical's biggest hits — "Under the Sea." In a January 2021 interview with Collider, he said that he "worked harder" on the role of Sebastian than he ever has for any other part he's played.
"I tend to say yes to things when I feel like I can do it, but I'm actually not sure I'm the smart choice or the person naturally who should be doing it. That's true of Sebastian, for a lot of ways that are uncomfortable," he said. "I'm not of Caribbean descent, doing that kind of work and trying to immerse myself. I've spent a lot of time in Trinidad and I went to Jamaica to research, and I did a lot of voice work with Chris Walker and with the late Tony Hall, to try to get the voice right. But more than the voice, the thing about a dialect is that everybody's voice is actually very different, so consistency is really more important than accuracy. Your speech pattern is based on culture, and that was the thing I didn't wanna let down."