The Little Mermaid makeup artist caught wind of the trash talk regarding his latest involvement in the Disney live-action remake, and he's not taking kindly to the criticism.
According to Insider, Peter Swords King, a 42-year-veteran, responded to haters who claim he should've never been hired to transform Melissa McCarthy into Ursula for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.
Fans believed that the makeup artist should've been part of the LGBTQ community or a drag performer, since the original animated villain took inspiration from the famous 1970s drag queen Divine.
Peter is no rookie to the industry. Yet, that didn't stop people from being upset that he was selected to transform the character because of his lack of connection to the drag community.
Last week, a behind-the-scenes video was released of the Oscar-winning makeup artist doing Melissa's Ursula makeup, and the internet went wild, especially among drag queens and former contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race. One performer stated, "Now when we said Ursula was inspired by a drag queen we didn't mean one who had only been doing it for 3 months bc—"
Season 14 RuPaul's Drag Race star Kerri Elyse Colby responded to the BTS clip, that the controversial makeup job was "absolutely why we should hire up and coming queer artists with a pulse on the present and a vision for the future more often."
- absolutely why we should hire up and coming queer artists with a pulse on the present and a vision for the future more often. Yes I agree, this is that.
Peter disagreed with the intensity of the criticism thrown at him and his performance as Ursula's makeup artist. "I find that very offensive," he said. "Why can't I do as good a job as a queer makeup artist?"
Due to the lack of representation, it would've been an excellent opportunity for Disney to include actual drag artists and performers. "That's ridiculous," Peter said. "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."
According to Insider, Peter even claimed that his design of Ursula wasn't "based on Divine" or "any drag acts at all" even though Melissa said the opposite when talking to Deadline back in May.
"I personally don't get it. Yes, I'm very old now, so that's fine, I get that too, but, you know, a makeup artist or makeup designer could design makeup, they don't have to have an attachment to the nature of what they're doing," Peter added.
Yes, I think the criticism was a little harsh, but Peter's remarks about how representation shouldn't factor into who gets the job or not reminds me of Richard Dreyfuss's controversial comments about the new Oscar diversity rules.
According to CNN, movies must now meet at least two of four benchmarks, such as including lead actors from underrepresented groups or at least 30% of the cast and crew from these groups. Richard said the new rules make him want to "vomit" and he doesn't "think that there is a minority or a majority in this country that has to be catered to like that."
Honestly, I think it's fair for underrepresented communities to criticize how they're portrayed in the media. If individuals who don't necessarily belong to these communities struggle with accepting those complaints, maybe they should reconsider taking those jobs in the first place.
