Melissa McCarthy Had A Hilarious Reaction To Winning A Huge Role Over Lizzo
Lizzo starring in "The Little Mermaid?" Now that's something we'd love to see! Well, it turns out she would to too. The super sassy and confident performer has admitted she would have loved to have taken on the role of the voice stealing villain Ursula in a remake of the fairytale.
In fact, back in November 2018, Lizzo even went as far as to share videos of herself on Twitter painted up purple as the iconic Disney villain while wearing a black dress, over the top makeup (complete with bright blue eyeshadow and red lips!), and Ursula's instantly recognizable white bouffant hair. "I'M URSULA. PERIOD," she wrote in all caps alongside the video, tagging Disney's official account as she belted out a version of "Poor Unfortunate Souls." She then followed up with other tweets making it very clear she felt she was born to play the character.
The clips appeared to be a public plea for her to appear in the live action remake of the movie, which was first revealed by Deadline in 2016. But, while there's no doubting Lizzo made a seriously epic (and very convincing, may we add) Ursula, it wasn't meant to be. Despite her public efforts, Variety confirmed in June 2019 that none other than "Bridesmaids" and "Mike and Molly" star Melissa McCarthy had landed the role.
Well, Lizzo and McCarthy later ran into each other at an event following the casting furore — and now we know what went down between the two.
Melissa meets Melissa
Despite Lizzo's obvious desire to play Ursula in Disney's "The Little Mermaid" live action remake, that doesn't mean she has hard feelings against Melissa McCarthy. In fact, the two came face to face at Adele's CBS concert special — which aired in November 2021 — and even joked about them going head-to-head for the role.
"She was like, 'Hi, I'm Melissa.' And I was like, 'Hi, I'm Melissa,'" Lizzo told Variety, referring to her birth name, Melissa Viviane Jefferson. Who knew!? But with that aside (just for a second), Lizzo then continued by telling McCarthy she auditioned for Ursula too, and revealed McCarthy reacted by asking, "'Well, why the hell did I get the part?'" which Lizzo described as being "a classic Melissa McCarthy thing to say."
The "Good As Hell" singer told McCarthy that her audition wasn't up to scratch, before the two uncovered another crazy similarity.
It turns out that not only were the two Melissas chatting about the role they both wanted, but McCarthy then introduced Lizzo to her daughter, named... Vivian! Yep, just like Lizzo's middle name. "I'm like, 'Get out of here, because my name is Melissa Viviane,'" Lizzo recalled. "We were looking at each other like, 'What the hell is going on?'"
The new version of "The Little Mermaid" stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, and, according to Deadline, will make a big change for Ursula. The 2023 live action remake will make McCarthy's character Ariel's aunt, the sister of her dad.