Quinta Brunson is officially stepping into one of animation’s most iconic roles: Betty Boop, in a live-action feature film produced through her company Fifth Chance Productions alongside Fleischer Studios. The casting clicked immediately for most people — the expressive face, the wit, the particular mix of humor and confidence. But underneath the announcement sits a history that almost nobody learned in school: Betty Boop’s look and sound were built, in large part, on the talent of a Black child performer named Esther Jones — known as Baby Esther — who never received a cent of credit.
The casting that feels like it was always supposed to happen
Brunson, the Emmy-winning creator of Abbott Elementary, has been clear that she doesn’t want to make a nostalgia vehicle. The untitled project — developed with Mark Fleischer, grandson of Betty Boop’s original creator Max Fleischer — will explore the character’s origins and how she grew beyond her creator’s control. Brunson described the ambition herself: “Betty Boop is one of our nation’s most beloved cartoon characters, yet somehow still remains pleasantly niche. She has had a quiet but undeniable impact on culture for nearly a century… I realized there was a much deeper story to tell. One that could be explored in a way that feels refreshing, subversive, and timeless, much like Betty herself.” She’s compared the project’s scope to what Greta Gerwig did with Barbie — using a classic female icon as a vehicle for something with real cultural weight.
For her part, Mark Fleischer’s confidence in the choice wasn’t subtle: “Quinta so embodies Betty’s love of life, intelligence, humor, sassiness and compassion that the relationship between her as Betty and Max burst into life at its mere mention.” That’s not standard Hollywood press release language. Something about this pairing clearly landed even in early conversations. And given what we now know about where Betty Boop actually came from, the choice of Brunson to lead this film carries more weight than the average casting announcement.
Baby Esther: the Harlem singer who became Betty Boop without the credit
Born around 1919 in Chicago, Esther Lee Jones — Baby Esther — was performing in Harlem clubs including the Cotton Club by the late 1920s. Her signature was a baby-voice scat style built around playful phrases, including “boop-oop-a-doop.” She was a child. She was magnetic. And she was noticed.
In 1928, white singer Helen Kane saw Baby Esther perform in New York and began incorporating her vocal style and catchphrases into her own act. Kane rose to national fame on the strength of that sound — most notably with “I Wanna Be Loved by You.” When Max Fleischer launched Betty Boop in 1930, he used the “boop-oop-a-doop” phrase that had already been popularized, and the character’s exaggerated expressions and girlish energy tracked closely to the performing style Baby Esther had made her own.
Here’s where it gets both revealing and painful: when Kane later sued Fleischer, claiming Betty Boop had been modeled on her image, Fleischer’s legal team responded by producing evidence that Kane herself had copied Baby Esther. The court accepted it. Kane’s lawsuit collapsed. And in the process, the legal record quietly confirmed that the cultural DNA of one of America’s most recognizable cartoon characters originated with a Black girl from Harlem — a girl who was never named in the credits, never compensated, and was largely forgotten for decades.
Today, historians and cultural archivists are working to restore Baby Esther’s place in that story. Brunson’s film — with its stated goal of examining how Betty Boop developed “a life of her own” beyond her creator — arrives at a moment when that restoration is finally gaining traction. Whether the film addresses Baby Esther directly remains to be seen. But the fact that a Black woman is now playing Betty Boop, in a project built around examining the character’s true origins, is not a coincidence that goes unnoticed.