Disney to Debut Goth ‘Anti-Princess’ Shelley Mary for Halloween
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SURE SOME girls wanna be the princess, and some want to play the villain but whattabout the misfits or non-comforming girls looking for a role model that meets somewhere in the middle.
Fear not, Disney’s got you covered.
Just in time for Halloween, the House that Mickey built will debut its first “anti-princess” Shelley Mary.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “She’s something of an anti-princess. That is, she’s a regular kid, a preteen whose idols aren’t the privileged class but the outsize personalities that make up some of Disney’s most warped characters. Give her the shape-shifting abilities of Maleficent, the spellbinding prowess of the Evil Queen from Snow White or the charisma of Dr. Facilier (the Shadow Man) from The Princess and the Frog. Shelley Marie is also that rare original character created not for a movie but for a starring role at a Disney theme park.”
In “Villainous!,” a Halloween-themed limited run of Disney California Adventure’s popular “World of Color” evening light and water show, the company’s fairy tale crafters are making the case that evil doesn’t have to mean bad. After all, no one is ever always good. Instead, the young Shelley Mary—her name a play on Frankenstein author Mary Shelley—is a celebration of the individual, and an acknowledgment from the happily-ever-after factory that “normal” isn’t one size fits all.
Shelley Mary, whose fashion aesthetic is a mash-up of Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family and Lydia from Beetlejuice, but with fewer goth overtures and bolder colors, is the creation of celebrated Disney animator Eric Goldberg. His credits include Hercules, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana, though he’s best known in Disney circles for bringing to life Genie from Aladdin.
