Actress and singer Jodi Benson, who voiced Ariel in Disney's animated The Little Mermaid, will lend her voice in the upcoming Christian children's series The Wingfeather Saga.
Season one of the six-episode series will be released on Dec. 2 on the Angels Studios app and is the top crowdfunded animated family series in history. It is based on Christian singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson’s bestselling fantasy book series by the same name. Peterson serves as the show's producer.
"I'm so thankful, so honored that the team made the selection for me to be part of this project," Benson, who will play the character, Nia Igiby, told The Christian Post. "It's wonderful to do an incredible story with an incredible character but also to add the element of a faith-based company. It's been a perfect blend for me."
The story features a variety of loveable characters and dives deep into themes of redemption and Christian family values. Several veteran artists from studios like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon and Blue Sky helped create the "hand-painted" CGI animation rendering technique that can be viewed throughout the series.
"I love my character of Nia. She is incredibly powerful, the authority that she commands, she is incredibly brave, but she's also an amazing mother who loves her kids ferociously and is a mama bear to the ninth degree," Benson said.
"It's amazing to have this type of a story for families because it's not like a fluff project; it has a lot of deeper messages going on," she continued. "It also has a gamut of emotions going on. There are times of fear, there are times of sorrow, there are times of incredible joy. And I think all of these types of feelings are important for children to be able to experience and to be able to process through; that is important."
Benson also says that she is proud to be part of a series with Christian undertones because she was raised in a religious household.
"I grew up with a strong faith as a little girl going to church every week, and I think that I could start feeling that sense of God really drawing me into a relationship with Him in fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, but I didn't really know what it meant to have a personal relationship," she noted.
The actress said she didn't fully commit her life to Christ until after she met her husband, Ray Benson.
"When I met my husband when I was 18, and he introduced me [and said], 'You know you can have this personal relationship, and this is what it looks like.' It just was so wonderful to know. I had been called, and I had been feeling that pull, but then coming to the fruition of this is what it looks like," she said. "And to be able to go forward in my career and know that God is in charge of that and directing me every step of the way and making sure that every project that I'm a part of is exactly where He wants me to be."
"It's having that guiding light that has really led me over these past 42 years on my career that's been a huge blessing," Benson asserted.
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Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian/Stringer
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
