Meet The Characters

Tiana is a bright and resourceful nineteen-year-old who dreams of opening her own New Orleans restaurant. Inspired by her late father, she knows everything about cooking and running a business. She has taken his advice of dreaming big and working incredibly hard to achieve her goal even in the face of sizable obstacles. Along the way she loses sight of what was really important. As fate should have it, an adventure involving a frog, a firefly and an alligator reveal to her that what she wants isn’t necessarily what she needs.

Prince Naveen is a handsome, exotic prince from the far-off country of Maldonia. A Jazz fanatic, Naveen is visiting New Orleans to experience first hand the birthplace of this musical phenomenon. Naveen is a charming, gregarious man who has a problem with responsibility. Recently cut off by his parents because of his gallivanting ways, he is looking to somehow maintain his lavish lifestyle while avoiding having to actually work for a living. Through his relationship with Tiana, Naveen discovers inner nobility he never knew he had.

Louis is a huge, fun-loving alligator with a heart of gold and a love for Jazz. After a lifetime of listening to the great Jazz musicians performing on the riverboats, Louis taught himself to play the trumpet and has become a Jazz virtuoso. He desperately yearns to play for an audience of appreciative humans while trying not to scare them half to death.

Ray is a lovesick Cajun firefly who’s constantly pining for his beloved paramour, Evangeline. Amusingly obtuse, warm and easy-going, Ray beams positive energy, spreading light and always looking on the bright side of life.

Mama Odie is a 197-year-old blind Bayou Fairy Godmother who lives deep in the Louisiana bayou with her “seeing-eye snake” Juju. She’s comically eccentric, yet wise and all-knowing, and loves making big batches of her magical gumbo that she concocts in an old bathtub.

Doctor Facilier is a sinister, charismatic practitioner who works the French Quarter luring unsuspecting “marks” into deals where he technically gives them whatever they want but always leaves them much worse off than they were before. Facilier is accompanied by his sidekick shadow that actually has a life and personality of its own. Facilier and shadow yearn to expand their small time operation, spread darkness and corruption, and become fantastically wealthy in the process.

Tiana’s childhood friend – an enthusiastic, romance-obsessed and very spoiled debutante daughter of “Big Daddy” La Bouff, the richest man in all of Lousiana. Charlotte has dreamed of one day marrying a Prince and becoming a genuine Princess since she was four years old. When she finally sees an opportunity to make her fairy-tale dream come true, she is determined to make it happen.

Charlotte’s father and wealthy sugar baron. He’s affable, imposing and powerful, but melts to the whims of his headstrong daughter.

Lawrence is Prince Naveen’s stiff, pompous, roly-poly valet. Though playing the part of Naveen’s dutiful manservant, Lawrence is secretly envious of the Prince’s charm, good looks and position – a fact that Facilier exploits with comically sinister consequences.

James

Tiana’s father, an upstanding, exemplar father who hoped to open his own restaurant one day. James instilled in his daughter his beliefs that good food brings people together and that if you work hard enough, anything is possible.
James died in World War I while Tiana was barely a teenager, but his spirit and dream continue strongly in his daughter.

Eudora

Tiana’s nurturing mother, who worries that her only daughter is working so hard to realize her dream, she is missing out on some of the most important things life has to offer. She is the best seamstress in all of New Orleans whose top client happens to be “Big Daddy” La Bouff. Eudora has created a wardrobe of Princess dresses for his beloved daughter, Charlotte.