‘The Little Mermaid’ makeup artist responds to Ursula backlash

Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula directly opposes Halle Bailey’s Ariel in Disney’s live-action adaptation of ‘The Little Mermaid’. However, with the character’s references to drag queens, many believe that Ursula’s makeup should’ve been done by a queer artist.

Peter Smith King, McCarthy’s makeup artist on set, disagrees with the criticism.

“I find that very offensive,” King told Insider. “Why can’t I do as good a job as a queer makeup artist?

“That’s ridiculous. That’s trying to claim it and that’s fine, if that’s what they wanna do, but don’t put people down because they’re not what they want it to be.”

The inspiration that led to Ursula

Rob Minkoff, character animator for the original 1989 film, revealed that Divine, a late drag performer, was a huge inspiration for Ursula.

“Divine seemed like such a great, larger-than-life character, and it just seemed like a funny and quirky idea to take [Ursula] and treat her more like a drag queen,” Minkoff said.

King went on to state that his version of Ursula wasn’t based on drag queens.

“It wasn’t based on any drag acts at all,” he said.

However, Divine was certainly channeled in McCarthy’s performance as she wanted to pay homage to drag queens.

“I always was like, I know for a fact, but I couldn’t prove it, that [Ursula] had to be based on Divine. She just had to be — I was like, the makeup, the look, the attitude. And now we know that yeah, she was, of course, based on Divine.”

Drag queens on Ursula

Kerri Colby, a contestant on season 14 of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’, shared a video to Twitter emphasizing the importance of hiring queer artists, stating that “[this is] absolutely why we should hire up and coming queer artists with a pulse on the present and a vision for the future more often.”