The live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid" is finally here.
On May 26, the movie hit theaters, and in it, fans got to see Melissa McCarthy portray Ursula, the sea witch, and hear her rendition of the character's iconic song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls."
On Sunday Sitdown May 28, Willie Geist asked McCarthy if it was "nerve-wracking" to showcase her singing skills in the movie.
"Oh my god, it was," she said. “When I got it, and I knew I was doing it, then it was, like, ‘What have you done? Like, what have you possibly done?’”
While McCarthy has sung before — including a duet with Barbra Streisand for the 2016 album "Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway" — she went through singing lessons to prepare for Ursula's big number.
She said she went in thinking, "I have to try to sing perfectly," a mindset she had to overcome to get comfortable with the character. Her vocal coach challenged her perfectionist attitude bluntly, she said.
"It was really once he's like, 'You can’t. You’re not going to do that.' And I was, like, 'First of all, thanks, Eric.' But he was right," she said.
"I was, like, 'I don’t know how to do things if it’s not in character,'" she continued. "And he’s, like, 'Singing is the same thing.' And then it made sense to me. I said, 'I don’t know how to do something in any area perfectly, but if I can do it in character...'”
Doing things in character has always been a comfortable feeling for McCarthy. When she took on the role of Ursula, the "Bridesmaids" star channeled the legendary drag queen Divine as well as her own drag alter ego, Miss Y, for the role.
"I am a huge fan of drag, I always have been," she said. "There’s a bravado to it, and a self-deprecation to it."
"I always said about Ursula, I was, like, 'That’s the drag queen at the bar I want to have a drink with, with my whole heart,'" she added.
When it came to playing Ursula, McCarthy was so excited about the role that she offered to work the catering truck.
"I was truly, like, 'I’m pretty good with organization. I make a good hummus,'" she told Geist.
McCarthy said she thought about how she wanted to give justice to Pat Carroll, Ursula's voice actor in the 1989 film.
"I can’t touch Pat Carroll," she said. "I mean, she’s perfection, so it’s, like, you just admire and bow."
She also considered the character's backstory and how it related to her own life.
“I just kind of went in, and I was, like, ‘If I didn’t know the story, what would I think about Ursula?’" she said. "And it was, like, ‘There’s so much damage there' — especially through COVID, I was, like, ‘That’s a gal who’s isolated a lot.’ And I was, like, ‘Well, that’s as method as I ever want to be.’”