20 Things You Didn’t Know About Beauty and the Beast

Mrs. Potts and Chip (Image via Disney)

12. Chip originally had just a single line

Chip Potts, the son of Mrs. Potts, is one of the cuter characters in a film full of occasionally terrifying adults and monsters. Originally, though, he was only going to have a single line. The precocious teacup was set to be little more than a background character while all the adults in the film would have gone about their fairy tale business.

Young actor Bradley Michael Pierce impressed the filmmakers so much, however, that they quickly wrote new lines for an expanded character. They also cute a mute music box, which would have been an additional “cute” character added to bring some levity to the film.

Chip’s new role included impressing Belle with a bubbling trick, though he gets admonished by Mrs. Potts. He also stows away when Belle leaves the castle to rescue her father Maurice, who is being held in the cellar of his home by Gaston and the frightened villagers. He uses an automated firewood cutter – another of Maurice’s inventions – to help Belle and her father escape and eventually rescue the Beast.

The existence of Chip, in general, raises a lot of questions about the nature of the curse and the passage of time in Beauty and the Beast. Mrs. Potts seems, well, a little too old to be his mother, for one. Flashbacks in the prequels also show him to be the same age at the time of the curse as he was when it is finally lifted, implying the Enchantress’ spell somehow freezes time along with human biology.