Quinta Brunson as Betty Boop is not random casting. It is the kind of casting that makes more sense the more you know about Betty’s history. The Abbott Elementary creator and star has the comic timing, charm, intelligence and cultural fluency to make a nearly century‑old cartoon feel fresh again. She is sharp without being cold, sweet without being saccharine, and she understands how to make nostalgia subversive. But the real excitement is not just Quinta in a flapper dress. It is what her involvement could mean for the story.

Because Betty Boop did not emerge from a vacuum. Her voice, her “boop‑oop‑a‑doop,” her flirtatious energy and her Jazz Age swagger have long been linked to Black performance culture, to vaudeville, to the Harlem Renaissance, and to Black women whose names were never printed on the merchandise.

Here is what Variety reported:

Quinta Brunson will develop and star in a Betty Boop feature film from Fleischer Studios and Fifth Chance Productions. Mark Fleischer, grandson of Betty Boop creator Max Fleischer, is involved. The film will explore Betty Boop’s origin and evolution through Max Fleischer’s perspective, examining the relationship between artist and creation as Betty becomes commercially and culturally powerful.

This marks Betty Boop’s first starring theatrical motion picture role since the 1930s. Brunson described Betty as “pleasantly niche” but culturally impactful for nearly a century. Mark Fleischer praised Brunson as embodying Betty’s “love of life, intelligence, humor, sassiness and compassion.”

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The Black History Behind Betty Deserves More Than Viral Shorthand

Online, the conversation about Betty Boop’s origins often collapses into one name: Baby Esther Jones. She was a Black child performer whose act was cited during Helen Kane’s lawsuit against Fleischer Studios as evidence that Kane did not originate the baby-voice “boop” style. Some people now describe Baby Esther as the “real Betty Boop,” but the history is more complicated than that. Betty was not simply based on one Black woman in a clean, settled way. She evolved from a poodle-like nightclub singer into a human flapper icon, and her sound, look and energy came from a wider performance ecosystem: Jazz Age nightclubs, vaudeville, minstrelsy, Harlem Renaissance stages and performers whose names were often left out of official credit.

Florence Mills also belongs in that wider conversation. Baby Esther was sometimes promoted as a “Miniature Florence Mills,” and Mills was one of the great Black stars of the 1920s. She died young in 1927, before Betty Boop became famous, but the world she helped define, full of music, gesture, humour, style and stage confidence, is part of the cultural atmosphere Betty emerged from.

Vintage newspaper image showing a large crowd gathered for Florence Mills’ funeral, illustrating the enormous public impact of the Harlem Renaissance star.
Black-and-white portrait of Florence Mills, the Harlem Renaissance performer whose Jazz Age fame and stage presence shaped conversations around Betty Boop’s cultural influences.
Vintage newspaper clipping showing a young Black performer beside text about high weekly pay, used in discussions of Baby Esther Jones and Betty Boop’s origins.
Vintage newspaper clipping reporting on Helen Kane’s lawsuit over Betty Boop, citing Baby Esther’s earlier “boop” performance style in court.
Black-and-white portrait of singer and performer Helen Kane, whose lawsuit against Fleischer Studios became central to the Betty Boop origin debate.
Vintage newspaper clipping reporting on Baby Esther Jones, a young Black performer, amid wider discussion of her role in the Betty Boop origin story.

The Real Test Is What the Movie Chooses to Remember

Variety’s framing focuses on Max Fleischer and the artist‑creation relationship. That is a valid angle. Max was a brilliant animator, and his story with Betty, a cartoon that takes on a life of her own, could be clever and moving.

But if the film only looks at Betty through Max’s eyes, it risks leaving out the very women who helped shape the character. It would be like making a movie about rock‑and‑roll and never mentioning Black musicians. The music would still sound good, but the history would be hollow.

Quinta Brunson is exactly the right person to balance that. She built Abbott Elementary on warmth, wit and a clear understanding of who gets to tell what story. She does not shy away from race, but she never lets it become the only note. That same instinct could turn a nostalgic IP movie into a sharp, funny, bittersweet film about authorship, influence and the cost of being remembered.

The Backlash Will Be Predictable and Wrong

Let us be honest: the culture‑war accounts will scream about Quinta Brunson making Betty Boop “woke.” They will say Hollywood is race‑swapping another icon. They will act as if a Black woman playing Betty is ahistorical.

But that outrage collapses the moment you ask: where did Betty’s sound come from? Where did her style, her slang, her sass come from? The answer is not a white animator’s solitary genius. It is a whole performance world, and a whole lot of that world was Black. A Black woman telling that story is not “woke” (not that there is anything wrong with being “woke”). It is historically interesting. It is also long overdue.

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