Rihanna has been enjoying a stellar year, with her headlining performance at Super Bowl LVII and the big reveal that she’s expecting another child.
The singer and hip-hop artist A$AP Rocky welcomed their first child in 2022, and Rihanna is staying busy with various projects and endeavors in addition to motherhood.
She’s already well known for her music with a catalog of hits that includes Stay, We Found Love, Umbrella, and Pon De Replay, bringing her immense popularity around the globe.
Rihanna has also tackled several acting roles, appearing in films such as Oceans 8 and Battleship and lending her voice to the computer-animated sci-fi comedy Home.
Now she is preparing to get blue, as she’ll lend her voice to the iconic role of Smurfette in an upcoming movie based on the popular Smurfs cartoon characters.
The big news arrived as one of many announcements from the annual CinemaCon event this week, including the news of WWE star John Cena’s role in Barbie, among other reveals.
Rihanna is heavily involved in the upcoming Smurfs film
Based on the details that arrived from CinemaCon 2023, singer Rihanna has a starring voice role for the upcoming Smurfs movie. She will take on the role of the iconic Smurfette, the bubbly blonde and blue character from the cartoon.
According to Variety, Rihanna made a surprise appearance at CinemaCon to reveal her involvement in the movie, joking that she “tried to get the Papa Smurf part but it didn’t work out.”
“Getting to do animation is a fun journey for me,” she said from Las Vegas’s Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino.
“In this, I got to play a part where I got to just imagine, I got to be, I got to show up in my pajamas in my third trimester and play a little blue s***,” the singer joked.
In addition to her voice role, it’s been revealed that Rihanna will produce and write new music for the film, directed by Puss In Boots director Chris Miller. As of this writing, the new Smurfs film doesn’t have an official title.
Rihanna made her movie debut with a cameo in 2006’s Bring It On: All or Nothing, a part of the cheerleader movie franchise, before getting a role as Petty Officer Cora Raikes in 2008’s Battleship. She last appeared in 2019’s Guava Island opposite actor and fellow musical artist Donald Glover.
Rihana is the next singer to take on Smurfette voice role
Many kids, and even adults, who grew up during the 1980s will recall the animated Smurfs series, which lasted eight years on NBC, starting in 1981 and spanning the decade.
It was based on a Belgian comic series of the same name by Peyo and produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, well known for bringing hit cartoon characters to TV, such as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, and The Flinstones.
The first official Smurfs movie arrived in 1976 as a Belgian animated film directed by Smurfs creator Peyo. It came to the United States in 1983, following the success of the cartoon’s first few seasons.
In 2011, a live-action film arrived with computer-animated Smurfs interacting with the on-screen actors that included Neil Patrick Harris, Sofia Vergara, Jayma Mays, and Hank Azaria, who played a real-life version of the villain Gargamel.
Singer Katy Perry held down the voice role of Smurfette for the first foray into a major motion picture based on the characters from the United States.
The film was successful at the box office, bringing in over $563 million worldwide, but was generally not well received by critics. As of this writing, it holds a 21 percent Tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes based on 120 reviews from critics.
A 2013 sequel performed even worse, with a 14 percent aggregate rating on the website. That film brought back many of the main cast members, with Perry reprising the voice role of Smurfette.
Rihanna’s fans will hope she has the best-performing version of the character when the next attempt at a Smurfs movie arrives in 2025.