{"id":599397,"date":"2026-08-29T06:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/599397\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T06:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:26:14","slug":"she-speaks-hebrew-meet-disneyland-paris-israeli-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/599397\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018She speaks Hebrew?\u2019 Meet Disneyland Paris\u2019 Israeli princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

Working at Disneyland<\/a> Paris may sound like a fairy-tale job, but behind the costumes, smiles and magic lies a demanding profession built on auditions, dancing, acting and meticulous attention to detail.<\/p>\n

Noa Ben, who worked in the park\u2019s character department, told the ynet studio what it takes to land such a role, how Disney\u2019s princesses have changed over the years and what happened when Israeli visitors unexpectedly heard Hebrew from the character standing in front of them.<\/p>\n

\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/p>\n

Noa Ben as Belle <\/p>\n

(Photo: Courtesy of Noa Ben)<\/p>\n

At Disney, even the language used by performers is part of maintaining the illusion. Ben does not say she \u201cplayed\u201d a particular princess. Instead, she says she was a \u201cfriend\u201d of several characters. \u201cWe preserve the magic and don\u2019t really use terms like \u2018I was,\u2019\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

So how does someone get such a job in the first place? According to Ben, it starts with an audition. \u201cYou need to know how to dance and act,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are also a lot of parameters that are less dependent on us. They\u2019re more things the casting people see, things I don\u2019t really know either. It\u2019s very mysterious. You just try, and sometimes it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/p>\n

As Alice in Wonderland <\/p>\n

(Photo: Courtesy of Noa Ben)<\/p>\n

\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e0\u05d5\u05e2\u05d4<\/p>\n

Aa Wendy from Peter Pan <\/p>\n

(Photo: Courtesy of Noa Ben)<\/p>\n

For Ben, the appeal of Disney princesses is not limited to children. \u201cPeople grew up on these stories, so even if they\u2019re adults and suddenly arrive at Disneyland, it still touches them somewhere,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a memory from the past, and it basically brings all of us back to being children. We all want to live happily ever after, and it\u2019s a kind of escape from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the princesses themselves have also evolved. \u201cThey\u2019re more talkative, funnier, they have more personality and you see it more,\u201d Ben said of newer characters. The stories have also broadened beyond romance. \u201cThere are relationships between women that aren\u2019t only connected to men. It could be a mother and daughter, it could be sisters. The story isn\u2019t only about the romantic part. There\u2019s more complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Ben, though, the role was first and foremost a job, and one she took seriously. \u201cI thought less about the fact that I was a princess and more about how I could do it as well as possible, and how I could make the people who came to meet me feel that they had really met a Disney princess,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018They didn\u2019t expect Hebrew to come out of my mouth\u2019<\/p>\n

Some of her favorite moments came when she met visitors from Israel. Ben said they often had no idea that the Disney character standing in front of them was Israeli. \u201cI met Israelis who didn\u2019t say they were from Israel, or told me they were from somewhere else, and then I heard them speaking and started talking to them in Hebrew too,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a very big surprise. People didn\u2019t know how to process it,\u201d she said of their reaction. \u201cThey didn\u2019t expect Hebrew to come out of my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Ben, those encounters were the highlight of the job. \u201cThat was my favorite experience at work, without a doubt, meeting Israelis and making them happy, and letting them see that there is representation and that this is something that\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli children, she added, are still every bit as captivated by the princesses. Asked whether they remain enchanted by the characters, she answered immediately: \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d Ben said the experience is one she expects to remember for years. \u201cIt was a crazy experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And although she first visited Disneyland only as an adult, she has no doubt she will return one day with her own children. \u201cOf course,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a child, I was never there. I only got to be there as an adult, but I\u2019ll absolutely go back there with my kids. It will be the most magical thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Working at Disneyland Paris may sound like a fairy-tale job, but behind the costumes, smiles and magic lies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-599397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}