- “I know your secret. You're a kraken, hiding as a human. And soon, everyone will know the truth. Kusjes!”
- ―Chelsea to Ruby Gillman.
Queen Nerissa, more commonly known by her “human” title Chelsea Van Der Zee, is the main antagonist in the DreamWorks film, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. She is an evil mermaid wanting revenge on Kraken-kind for stealing the Trident of Oceanus from her, to which it involves manipulating Ruby Gillman, a teenage girl with Kraken heritage.
Background[]
Nerissa was the queen of the mermaids who has a rivalry with Grandmamah and Agatha. After the battle of the trident, she attempted to steal the Trident of Oceanus back but was unsuccessful and was presumed to have died in the process.
Years later, she discovers that Agatha’s daughter is living on the surface and enrolls at Oceanside High School under the name Chelsea Van Der Zee to manipulate her into getting the Trident. She takes credit for Ruby saving Connors life and basks in the students praise while attempting to befriend Ruby.
After Ruby accidentally ruins prom by growing into her giant kraken form she is seen by Nerissa. Realizing that Ruby is a royal kraken, she decides to befriend Ruby to manipulate her to get the trident back.
Personality[]
Nerissa is self-absorbed and thinks the world revolves around her. She is a "Little Miss Perfect" type character with very high standards at Oceanside High School, given the fact that the students love everything about her. She is a master of deception, as evidenced with none of the humans suspecting who Nerissa really is. She lacks remorse for manipulating people, and her true focus is getting power for herself. She appears to be somewhat sadistic and hates the Gillman family with a passion, and presumably all krakens.
According to Ruby's grandmother, like other Mermaids, she is vain, selfish, and narcissistic, which is easily seen even in her human form (wherein she has a persona of a dim-witted, selfish, and yet somewhat caring girl who feels just as detached from reality as Ruby does and dreams of peace between the krakens and mermaids).
The PSA promo states that Chelsea is a mermaid, and that they are "charming and peaceful creatures" at least to humans, however, they are actually described as violent, unpredictable, vain, and power-hungry narcissists.
Physical Appearance[]
In her human disguise known as Chelsea, Nerissa has the appearance of a beautiful teenager with fair skin, wavy knee-length red hair, and pale blue eyes.
For clothing, she dawned a navy-blue zigzag choker around her neck, hoop earrings, a sleeveless, aquamarine blue ruffle crop-top, sparkling dark blue bell-bottom sport jeans, and a pair of white sneakers. She also has light blue nail polish.
In her base mermaid form, the only change physically is gaining a turquoise mermaid tail with dark orange spikes and fin tips.
However, Nerissa seems to have another mermaid form, possibly her original form, which is much larger than her human form and is around the size of a kraken. The sclera of her eyes in this form is bright blue and her iris is red; her hair is long and silvery-white and appears to be made of a watery texture, and her skin is dark red with blue patterns, and her tail has turquoise areas on her spikes and fin tips.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Mermaid Physiology: Like Krakens, Nerissa's form changes between land and water to accommodate for living on both.
- Land-Water Adaptability: While on land, Nerissa grows a pair of human legs. While in water, her legs are replaced with a fish tail.
- Underwater Breathing: While in her mermaid form, Nerissa is capable of breathing underwater.
- Super Speed: Nerissa is shown to be able to move incredibly fast under water on par with Ruby.
- Agelessness: Nerissa looks like a teenager despite being at least as old as Agatha Gillman. She states that mermaids don't age.
Abilities with the Trident[]
When using the Trident, Nerissa takes on a more monstrous looking mermaid form that allows her to stand up to krakens.
- Size Changing: With the Trident, Nerissa grows to gigantic size, rivaling krakens.
- Super-Strength: Nerissa gains great strength proportionate to her size. This strength is enough to tackle krakens.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Her true name, "Nerissa," means "sea nymph" in Greek.
- Nerissa's name is derived from the nereids of Greek mythology. A group of 50 sea nymphs which were partial inspiration for the myths of mermaids.
- If one takes the "Neris" part of her name and reverses it, it becomes "Siren", another mythological sea creature of Greek mythology.
- Chelsea's design and name is inspired by Chelsea Belcha, a story artist at Dreamworks who worked on The Bad Guys, & the Oscar-nominated Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, but her personality is based on Regina George from Mean Girls.
- Chelsea is the tenth female character in DreamWorks Animation to be a main antagonist, following Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run, Eris from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2, Gladys Sharp from Over the Hedge, Chantel DuBois from Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Ms. Grunion from Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Chef from Trolls, Dr. Zara from Abominable, and Queen Barb from Trolls World Tour.
- Chelsea appears to be able to shapeshift to some degree, as she has a human form and a mermaid form which appear very different from her presumed true form.
- Although it is not said in the film, the film's director Kirk DeMicco confirmed in a tweet that Chelsea was in love with a human named Frapi with whom she had a relationship, this was not presented in the film because that love relationship did not fit with the story.
- She says the name Van Der Zee is Dutch.
- "Van Der Zee" is faux-Dutch for “of the sea”, further foreshadowing that she is a mermaid.
- In an early draft, Chelsea was more of a delinquent and her "bonding time" with Ruby involved her stealing someone else's bike and tying a knot in the air tube of a scuba diver.[1]
- In one of these drafts, Chelsea was actually Nerissa's daughter and was taking revenge for her mother, who had been killed by Agatha Gillman.[2] However, the filmmakers resolved to make Chelsea a disguise and alias for Nerissa so Agatha wouldn't have blood on her hands.
- In the trailer, when she first meets Ruby, Chelsea ousts her as a Kraken and is more antagonistic. This is contrary to the movie where Chelsea attempts to bond with Ruby right away as part of her plan to manipulate her. This was done as rewrites were happening
- A shot of her sternly wielding the trident also appears in the trailer but never in the final film.
- Amanda Peet, Claire Forlani, Dakota Fanning, Lily Collins, Ashlee Simpson, Taylor Swift, Miranda Cosgrove, Isabella Amara, Michelle Rodriguez, Kathryn Hahn, Elisha Cuthbert, Hailey Duff, and Yari Shahidi are considered for the role before Annie Murphy (a newcomer who had never been in a major motion picture) got the role.
- Ironically, Nerissa's encouragement to Ruby about using the latter's Kraken heritage became a contributing factor to the former's downfall, as it was crucial for Ruby to team up with both her mother Agatha and her grandmother Grandmamah in finally defeating Nerissa with their shared Kraken powers.
References[]
External links[]
[]
v - e - d  | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|