McCarthy herself got her start as a performer in New York City in her early 20s as the drag queen Miss Y. “It’s all delicious things wrapped up in one.” McCarthy, who corroborated this on the Little Mermaid blue carpet in May, said that she is a “huge fan of drag.” “It’s just so fun, it’s irreverent, you can poke fun and pay homage to someone at the same time,” she said. Composer Alan Menken, who co-wrote the music with Ashman for the original animated Little Mermaid, also worked on the live-action movie and confirmed in April that Divine was the inspiration behind Ursula. “And I think Divine was somebody who really opened up the possibilities of what drag could be.” How Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula recognizes Divine and drag cultureĭisney can no longer avoid saying that Ursula and Divine are inextricable. “He was a pioneer, and we would not have the landscape of drag the way we know it today without Divine,” Schwarz says. In a sea of queens who “wanted to be Miss America,” glamorous and feminine, Divine, with his fierce refusal to abide by beauty standards, stood out. Four decades before RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag was “the opposite of hip,” Waters says. Back then, drag balls differed drastically from those of today. He started making films with Waters in the 1960s, in Baltimore. But in Ursula, audiences find otherworldly beauty-and now, a clear recognition of her roots.ĭivine, who also went by the name Harris Glenn Milstead, was born in 1945 and died of heart failure in 1988. It has toed a similar line with its practice of queer coding villains: Disney has been soundly criticized both for not making them overtly out and for assigning an evil connotation to being queer. Disney seemed to want to walk a tightrope between appeasing queer fans-many of whom have long seen themselves reflected in its characters-and not alienating those who oppose gay rights. Last year, then-CEO Bob Chapek defended the company’s reported $250,000 in donations to backers of Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney has a long, fraught relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. In 1989, Disney would have never openly acknowledged Divine’s influence, says Jeffrey Schwarz, who chronicled the longtime collaboration between Waters and Divine on Waters’ avant-garde “midnight movies,” like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, in the 2013 documentary I Am Divine. I was like, ‘the makeup, the look, the attitude.’ And now we know that yes, she was of course based on Divine.” And I always was like, I know for a fact-but I couldn’t prove it-that she had to be based on Divine. “I was a nanny, and we used to watch it every night. “I’ve watched The Little Mermaid more times than any other movie,” McCarthy said. At the film’s premiere in early May, the actor acknowledged Divine’s influence on the character. Ursula will return to screen on May 26 in Disney’s live-action Little Mermaid, with Melissa McCarthy playing the witch with campy, raspy relish. She never felt-as other people might have-that she looked weird or anything. She had a style that some people might not understand,” Waters tells TIME. Divine took what the world used against him, Waters says, and exaggerated it. To Waters, who met Divine when they were teens in the outskirts of Baltimore and became his close friend and creative partner, the similarities between Divine and Ursula go beyond the corporeal. With his signature look-an unnaturally high hairline with gigantic eyebrows and over-the-top makeup, crafted by the makeup artist Van Smith -Divine resembled Ursula. The original character in the 1989 movie was inspired by the triple threat drag queen, actor, and singer Divine, a fact that was mere speculation at first, but has since been confirmed by those involved with the film.ĭivine catapulted to cult fame after appearing in Pink Flamingos, John Waters’ filthy 1972 comedy. The face of Ursula-the villainous sea witch of The Little Mermaid infamy-might feel uniquely familiar to a child of the ‘70s-or the ‘80s, for that matter. Triptych of Ursula in the animated The Little Mermaid, the actor Divine, and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula in the live-action The Little MermaidĬredit - Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection Steve Rapport-Getty Images Disney
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