The Little Mermaid 's Melissa McCarthy channels drag queens and drinking alone to play Ursula
In 2011, Melissa McCarthy participated in a photo shoot with Entertainment Weekly as the cover star of the upcoming comedy issue. She dressed as Divine, the popular drag queen known for her association with filmmaker John Waters. She evened channeled a now-famous image of Divine in Waters' 1972 film Pink Flamingos, in which she points a gun towards camera in a red dress.
"It's my favorite photo shoot I've ever done in my entire life," McCarthy recalls 12 years later. "It still is the one I always talk about."
McCarthy's casting in Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid all feels kismet now because of that shoot. Alan Menken, who returned to write new music on the reimagining after composing the score for the animated original with Howard Ashman, confirms that Divine was used as inspiration for the Ursula character. "Which is always what I thought when it was first out, animated," McCarthy remarks. "I was like, 'That's somebody who enjoys some Divine and some John Waters.' That's all we watched in college."
The actress, known for roles in Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Nine Perfect Strangers, confirms she "100 percent" looked to Divine and drag queens as inspiration for her rendition of the iconic sea witch, one of the most popular Disney villains of all time.
"There's a drag queen that lives in me"
Disney Melissa McCarthy as Ursula in 'The Little Mermaid'
"I'm a huge, huge fan of drag shows and the whole art of it and the entertainment of it," she says. "I've been going to shows since I was not supposed to be going to shows. There's a drag queen that lives in me. I'm always right on the verge of going full-time with her."
In this year's The Little Mermaid, which stars Halle Bailey as Ariel and Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric, Ursula is the sister of King Triton (Javier Bardem). She's considered "the black sheep" of the family, says producer John DeLuca, who makes note of the pain that comes with that label.
"She's been put in this lair. It's like she's had too many martinis alone. Her friends are eels," McCarthy describes. "That is a woman who has seen it, been in it, dug her way back out. All my references are terrible, but I kept thinking, 'Many a Pall Mall has this woman had.'"
Before she became a household name, McCarthy worked as a nanny in New York City for the Ross family, whose two little girls would endlessly watch the animated Little Mermaid. So McCarthy would watch along — a little portion each night before bed. It also happens that, as the actress was getting her career off the ground, she would perform in a drag persona she called Miss Y at Manhattan clubs.
"I sat down with her to have a meeting, and the first thing she said to me, she goes, 'You know my career started in drag,'" recalls The Little Mermaid director Rob Marshall. "And I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'Well, I had a character that I played and I was part of a drag show. That was really where I began before I stepped into comedy and acting.'"
Speaking now of her Little Mermaid role, McCarthy adds, "To keep the humor and the sadness and the edginess to Ursula is everything I want in a character — and frankly, everything I want in a drag queen."
"Poor Unfortunate Souls"
Singing once petrified McCarthy. There was a time where she couldn't even hum a tune in front of her friends. "It's the thing that scares me the most," she admits. The nerves eased up once she began taking singing lessons on her own time, where she realized, "Stop trying to sing pretty and just sing in character."
In 2017, McCarthy and her husband and frequent collaborator Ben Falcone were linked to Margie Claus, a holiday-themed movie musical. The actress confirms, "We're still waiting on that one [to happen]." But after that small taste of singing, she craved more.
When McCarthy heard about The Little Mermaid, she practically begged Marshall, Oscar nominated for making 2002's Chicago, to play Ursula. "I literally was like, 'Please, please, please! I'll bring craft services. I make a great chicken salad, hummus. I can bring snacks,'" McCarthy remembers. "I don't know what lunacy went through my head, because I'm not known as a singer, but I just have always been so strangely in love with Ursula that I thought I can try and lose, but if I don't at least try for it, I'll regret it forever."
"I have to say, when you see her in this, you will not believe it because it's unlike anything she's ever done," Marshall says of his star. "It's really astonishing. Of course she's funny and wild, but there's such depth to what she's doing as an actor."
That includes her performance of "Poor Unfortunate Souls." McCarthy leaned into the reality of Ursula's isolation when approaching the musical number.
"Something that I found really fun was, which of the lines — either talking or singing — is Ursula just muttering to herself?" McCarthy says. "She's been isolated a long time, so it was fun to play around with which ones are her talking to her friends, which ones are her arguing with herself, and then which ones are actually intentionally outward to Ariel? The concept of that suddenly seemed really fun."
Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote lyrics for new music with compositions from Menken, mentions how people have already heard how well Bailey performs "Part of Your World" from the movie trailers. "But no one's ready for Melissa McCarthy," he notes of "Poor Unfortunate Souls." "She brings all of the delicious camp from the original, but then also is just scary. If that's your favorite song, you're going to be happy."
Read more about The Little Mermaid in EW's digital cover story. The film opens in theaters May 26.
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