KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Dreams do come true.

It def­i­nite­ly has for Lon­don-based St Kitts-born Trinidad-raised ac­tress Mar­ti­na Laird who has joined the world of The Lit­tle Mer­maid.

The 2023 live-ac­tion film swam in­to the­atres on May 26 fea­tur­ing Laird who plays the cas­tle’s house­keep­er, Lashana.

“I ab­solute­ly find this mag­i­cal, full of imag­i­na­tion, fun and dreams,” Laird told the T&T Guardian.

“I don’t even know how to de­scribe the kind of job it is to do what I have been do­ing for so long and to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring your whole shape and self for some­thing.”

Laird’s unique Tri­ni ac­cent stood out along with the Ja­maican-ac­cent­ed Se­bas­t­ian Dav­eed Dig­gs who gave the crus­tacean more of a Trinida­di­an feel.

“Ac­cent is like lan­guage for me,” she added.

“Work­ing over here I’ve been asked to move be­tween ac­cents and you have to be com­fort­able enough while you are do­ing it.

“Ac­cent be­ing a lan­guage; the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in your lan­guage means that the peo­ple will un­der­stand you specif­i­cal­ly. For me there is no point to be speak­ing a lan­guage to some­one who does not un­der­stand it.

“It was a won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence and I felt a sense of pride.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s very own na­tion­al in­stru­ment the steel­pan was at the heart of the film as The Lit­tle Mer­maid is rem­i­nis­cent of this re­gion’s Caribbean­ness with its clear wa­ters, vi­brant street mar­ket and ar­chi­tec­ture.

The melod­ic and rhyth­mic Caribbean mu­sic vibe, which was al­ready felt in the orig­i­nal an­i­ma­tion hits of “Un­der the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl”, is al­so promi­nent in the 2023 live film.

“We start­ed shoot­ing in March at the pop­u­lar Pine Woods Stu­dios in Lon­don and for the fi­nal weeks we went to Sar­dinia,” said Laird.

“They did want to shoot in the Caribbean but weath­er wise it was not the time to shoot.

“I loved the am­bi­tion of the film in rep­re­sent­ing the Caribbean re­gion.”

Laird, who was born in St Kitts, was raised in Trinidad.

Her Eng­lish-born fa­ther, Col­in Laird, moved to the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic dur­ing the war when he met her moth­er Jeanette nee But­ler. Af­ter mar­ry­ing, he was shipped out for ser­vice and her moth­er fol­lowed him to the var­i­ous places he re­lo­cat­ed. The cou­ple re­turned to Trinidad in the ear­ly 50s and took up res­i­dence.

Hav­ing won a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship to study French at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent at Can­ter­bury, Laird de­cid­ed to study dra­ma as part of her de­gree course. She went on to at­tend the Web­ber Dou­glas Acad­e­my of Dra­mat­ic Art.

“When you are at school you are ex­pect­ed to be a good stu­dent,” she ex­plained.

“I was try­ing to be the good stu­dent and daugh­ter. When I got to this coun­try (UK) and to uni­ver­si­ty, I re­alised peo­ple were go­ing on to dra­ma school and be­ing ac­tors.

“While there were great ac­tors in Trinidad like Er­rol Jones and Bar­bara As­son, no one did this for their whole life, every­body had to do some­thing else. It did not oc­cur to me un­til I came in­to this coun­try that I could do.”

Be­fore join­ing act­ing school, Laird was able to con­vince her par­ents that it would be a good thing.

“She (my moth­er) would have had a good time at the pre­mière if she had been alive. She would have loved the fact that I worked with Art Ma­lik (Sir Grims­by). He was in a se­ries in the 1980s called Jew­el in the Crown. We were avid view­ers, added Laird.”