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The collar, illuminating Ursula’s face with angler-fish-esque lights, not only gave her a “showbiz vibe” but also helped separate her from the dark environment around her. “Instead of going with a smooth surface like the animated film did, I really wanted to have the dimension of the texture of a real octopus.” To achieve that, she used a sequin fabric base with a laser cut leather on top - and in another divergence from the animation, added a dramatic collar.

“I’ve never been to so many aquariums in my life,” Atwood says of studying the eight-tentacled creatures that inspired her design. The Ursula they decided on had a 1950s Peggy Lee vibe combined with an octopus-inspired fashion sense. The team had to strike a balance between paying tribute to the original, while also creating something fresh, exciting, and distinct to McCarthy and her talents. With a character as storied as Ursula, creating a new iteration was no easy feat. It was a task undertaken alongside Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood and Oscar-winning makeup designer Peter Swords King, who says that McCarthy insisted there was no such thing as “too much.” McCarthy cites the confidence that that outlandish performance gave her, so it’s no surprise that she would lean heavily into that passion for drag when it came time to create her Ursula. I talked about being incredibly wealthy and beautiful and living extravagantly.” “I had a gold lamé swing coat on, a huge wig, big eyelashes. I went by Miss Y,” she said in the Rolling Stone interview, presumably a play on her nickname Missy. “It was me there with my lovely gay guy friends and I was dressed like a big old drag queen. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about performing comedy as the drag persona Miss Y in Hell’s Kitchen in the early ’90s. In addition to being a devoted fan of drag, McCarthy herself has a past as a drag performer. Throughout the film’s promotion, McCarthy has touted her love of the artform as inspiration, telling Deadline that she wants to give Divine her due. Now, with Melissa McCarthy’s live-action take hitting screens, the lasting impact of Ursula’s drag origins are as clear as ever. And I said, Howard, is it alright if I steal those? He said, I was hoping you would.” The result is a brilliant performance from Carroll, informed by Ashman’s own take on the character. “I stole ‘ innit’ from Howard,” Carroll confesses, referring to Ursula’s iconic remark. It was from that performance that some of Ursula’s most famous lines were born. But Minkoff, who would later go on to co-direct The Lion King, drew a much more voluptuous take on the character based on the drag queen Divine, who dominated counterculture as a fixture of John Waters’s filmography. And what to do with a character who is so fully formed in the original, there can seem little room for reinterpretation? Such a challenge is posed with The Little Mermaid’s Ursula-a character who not only occupies prime position as one of the most thrillingly evil Disney characters, but who brings with her a lesser known history directly related to the rich and colorful drag tradition.Īccording to animator Rob Minkoff, Ursula was originally described in the script as a Joan Collins–like figure, resulting in character designs that depicted a thin, bony woman with lionfish- or manta ray–inspired features. But such revisions, as seen in the current iteration of The Little Mermaid, also pose a challenge: The new mechanisms-look at those hyper-realistic CGI animals-run the risk of falling ironically flat when juxtaposed against the elegant creations of the original.

The musical was also made into a 1986 film of the same name, directed by Frank Oz.There are many reasons-beyond the lack of original IP-for a studio to reinvent a classic film: updating it to better reflect our diverse world, introducing it to a whole new audience, invoking the nostalgia of those who love the original. Because of its small cast and relatively simple orchestrations, it has become popular with community theatre, school and other amateur groups. and abroad, and a subsequent Broadway production. It later received numerous productions in the U.S. The musical premiered Off-Off-Broadway in 1982 before moving to the Orpheum Theatre Off-Broadway, where it had a five-year run. The music, composed by Menken in the style of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes several well-known tunes, including the title song, "Skid Row (Downtown)", "Somewhere That's Green", and "Suddenly, Seymour".

The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman. Little Shop of Horrors is a horror comedy rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh.