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AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- A New Zealand double amputee never expected a response when she sent a note to a special effects company asking if they would create a mermaid tail to help her swim. Two years later, her dream came true.
Nadya Vessey, (pictured) who lost both her legs to an illness during her childhood, sent an e-mail to the Weta Workshop prosthetics department.
Weta is best known for their special effects work in the "Lord of the Rings" series, and the 2005 remake of "King Kong."
"We have, over the years, done a number of things like this for people that have disabilities," a member of the Weta prosthetics department said.
Over the next two years, Weta staff members worked on Vessey's tail in their spare time. They covered a tail in a wetsuit fabric and added digitally-printed fish scales on it. The tail has four sections that allow some movement.
"A prosthetic is a prosthetic and your body has to be comfortable with it," Vessey said. "I'm still getting to know it because it requires you to swim in a different sort of a way."
Weta has made mermaid's tails before for the movie "Peter Pan." But they were simpler than Vesey's tail because the costume wearer had movement through the ankles.
The company said they have no plans to make mermaid tails for other amputees, but said the experience and insight they gained on Vessey's tail was well worth it.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From WISN-TV:
