![]() ![]() “There’s a lot of really edgy stuff in the early animated films that people had forgotten about, not the least of which was killing Bambi’s mother, but Disney had gotten very safe with the kinds of stories and films that it was making at that time,” Minkoff said of the company before Ashman’s arrival. Looking back at that era of the studio, Minkoff said people had forgotten that Walt Disney, the man, was an “innovator who had broken all the rules throughout his career.” Howard Ashman, left, and Alan Menken. And that’s just what he did with “The Little Mermaid,” which became the first in a string of animated hits for Disney. Once Ashman arrived in Los Angeles - as detailed in Don Hanh’s documentary “Howard” - he gravitated toward the animation arm of the studio, seeing an opportunity to marry his musical theater background with the more offbeat, experimental approach of the illustrators. “So John came back to me and said, ‘Howard liked your drawing, and that’s the way we want to go with it.’”Īshman, along with his creative partner, the composer Alan Menken, had been recruited by Disney after the success of their off-Broadway play “Little Shop of Horrors,” in the hopes that they could deliver the studio a much-needed hit. “Howard looked through all the designs and focused on that one,” Minkoff recalled Musker telling him at the time. But all of the accounts include the flash-in-the-pan moment when a young illustrator, Rob Minkoff, came up with a vampy, mascaraed matron. ![]() In some accounts, the animators working on the film were having a particularly tough time finding the right look for their antagonist, who was originally modeled after a certain sharp-tongued “Dynasty” matron. There’s plenty of mythology surrounding how the animated villain of 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, came to be. “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.More than three decades after Ursula, the buxom sea witch of Atlantica, first slithered her way onto the big screen, the underwater mistress of mayhem is back to tempt the seas in the new live-action version of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” In celebration of her return, everyone from comedian Melissa McCarthy, who’s playing the conniving nemesis of King Triton, to film historians, are taking the opportunity to pay tribute to the legendary drag queen who inspired Ursula’s unwholesome ways: Divine. I’m always right on the verge of going full-time with her,” McCarthy told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month, adding that drag “100 percent” influenced her portrayal of Ursula. Needless to say, the actress’ love and appreciation for drag goes deep and the original inspiration carried on with the remake. McCarthy, as she told Rolling Stone in 2017, used to perform as a drag queen in New York under the name Miss Y before her acting career took off and even dressed as Divine for Entertainment Weekly’s Comedy Issue in 2011. Ursula’s character in the original Little Mermaid was inspired by the late drag performer Divine and was described as the “Drag Queen of the Century” by People magazine in 1988. In a new interview ahead of the movie’s release, the actress and mom of two opened up about taking on the role of the iconic sea witch and confirmed that she was “100 percent” inspired by drag queens. Melissa McCarthy has starred in countless blockbuster dramas and comedies like Bridesmaids and Tammy, and now we’re about to see her shine once again in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid as Ursula. ![]()
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