The Queer Voice of Pat Carroll

The late voice actress imbued her characters, particularly Ursula, with her own queer charisma.

Like many other elder millennials, my clearest memory of Pat Carroll–who died July 31, at the age of 95–was as Ursula, the villainous sea witch in Disney’s 1989 film The Little Mermaid. Even as a child, I knew there was something about this voluptuous villainess that called to me, though it would take me many more years to realize just what it was that made her so appealing (hint: it’s her queerness). And, like many another queer boy of that day and age, I spent many hours pretending to be Ursula (I always insisted on being her when my friends and I would re-enact The Little Mermaid). Try as I might, however, I couldn’t capture Ursula’s essence and, to be honest, I still can’t, despite years of practice.

The reason for this failure on my part stems from Carrol herself, particularly her voice. There’s no question that a major reason that Ursula is such a dynamic villain is because the woman who voiced her had such a queer timbre (the same was also true of Aladdin’s Jafar, voiced by Jonathan Freeman and The Lion King’s Scar, voiced by Jeremy Irons, to say nothing of Pocahontas’ Governor Ratcliffe, voiced by David Ogden Stiers). Rarely have we seen a voice actor give as much to her role as Pat Carroll did to Ursula. 

Carroll has made clear in interviews that she drew a lot of her performance from seeing a recording of Howard Ashman. Given that Ashman was a gay man, it seems safe to say that Carroll must have known, on some level at least, just queer her performance was and how easily it could be appropriated by legions queer audiences. As she herself noted: “I got the whole attitude from him. … His shoulders would twitch in a certain way, and his eyes would go a certain way. … I got more about that character from Howard singing that song than from anything else.”

Unsurprisingly, much has been written about the queerness of Ursula as a character, from the way that she was clearly modeled on the famous drag queen Divine to the way that “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is essentially a drag performance that highlights the constructedness of gender. And it is also true that, thanks to Carroll’s performance, viewers of all ages were led to love this villainous character. She made being bad look good (blue eyeshadow, gelled hair, and all).  

Yet less attention has been paid to the particularities of Carroll’s vocal performance. There’s a certain irony to this, given that the entire film is premised on the idea of a young woman trading away her voice to gain the love of a prince (in fact, she goes on to spend half the movie not saying anything at all). And, no offense to Jodi Benson, but her performance can’t hold a candle to Carroll’s. After all, it’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls” that has become one of the film’s most enduringly popular songs, far more so than even the other great hits “Under the Sea,” “Part of Your World,” and “Kiss the Girl.” There’s something infectiously arch about the entire song, the way that Ursula–and perhaps, given her comments about Ashman, Carroll herself–was in on the joke. I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to say that it’s camp, but there is something knowing about the voice acting here that suggests as much. 

Time and again throughout The Little Mermaid, Carroll and Ursula both seem to savor the richness of their dialogue. In particular, there’s something almost Shakespearean about her monologues (as Carroll herself once put it, Ursula is a Shakespearean actor who has been condemned to selling used cars). Whether it’s declaiming that she’ll make King Triton wriggle like a worm on a hook or gloating over her “garden” of polyps, it’s Carroll’s voice that gives Ursula her sumptuous and sinister appeal. And, let’s be real, no one but Pat Carroll could have delivered the immortal line, “Come in, come in, my child. We mustn’t lurk in doorways. It’s rude.” And who could ever forget that earthy, villainous laugh?

Of course, all of this vocal villainy emerges most clearly in the film’s climax, when Ursula, having lost the magical seashell that she has been using to imprison and possess Ariel’s voice, shouts “You’re too late!,” even as she bursts out of her Vanessa disguise (a visually horrifying moment if there ever was one). It’s a brilliant juxtaposition of Ursula/Carroll’s harsh voice and her faux-Ariel visage, and yet another instance in which the film both explicitly and implicitly plays with the conventions and assumed understandings of gender and how it’s supposed to work. Though Ursula is ultimately punished and vanquished by the patriarchal authority of Eric (and his ship), not even that can ever expunge her sinister influence. 

Of course, Ursula wasn’t Carroll’s only foray into the world of voice acting. In fact, even before she appeared in The Little Mermaid she was a regular on a number of animated series of the 1980s, including A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and Pound Puppies. For me, though, one of her most iconic–and, indeed, her queerest–vocal iterations was as Grandma in both A Garfield’s Christmas and Garfield’s Thanksgiving. Grandma is one of the fiercest characters in the Garfield universe, known for her sit-ups (making her stomach, in her own estimation, hard as a rock), sassing her daughter-in-law, and making the best gravy in the whole county, saving her grandson Jon from his own disastrous efforts to cook Thanksgiving, and giving a rousing performance on the piano. 

In less capable hands, Grandma could have been a one-note character, a stereotype, but Carroll made her into something else, someone filled with warmth and love for her family, even if she could also deal out waspish comments and a whack on the head with a ladle in equal measure. There’s something more than a litlte bit androgynous about her, thanks in no small part to the very nature of Carroll’s voice itself, which wasn’t androgynous, per se, but neither was it traditionally feminine. She was, I think, the kind of grandmother that queer boys like me always loved seeing on television (it’s also worth pointing out that she bore more than a passing resemblance to my own late grandma). 

It was Carroll’s genius that she was able to use her voice–raspy, harsh, and even a little strident–to capture so many indelible animated characters. Though you always knew it was her, she had the ability to make each of her creations just different enough from the others that they took on a life of their own. And, even when they were supposedly evil, she made you love them anyway. 

Rest in peace, dearly lady. Your queer fans will always love and miss you.