| “ | We wouldn't want to spend the weekend in the box of shame, would we? | „ |
| ~ Miss Hattie |
Miss Hattie is the minor antagonist in Despicable Me. She is a mean woman who runs an all-girl orphanage Miss Hattie's Home for Girls.
She is voiced by Kristen Wiig.
Profile
Appearance
Miss Hattie is an extremely full-figured lady with brown hair curved in tight bangs and has blue eyes. She often wears large heeled shoes and a pink cardigan and matching pink skirt. The cardigan has a pink-gem brooch. She also resembles Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter.
Personality
Miss Hattie is ironically different from the attitude of the cheerful and happy looks of the Orphanage. Unlike these traits, Miss Hattie appears as a gloomy, stern and uncaring woman. It is possible that Miss Hattie forces the orphans into child labor, as she dismisses Margo Gru, Edith Gru and Agnes Gru and says, "Go clean something of mine."
When Gru came to adopt the little girls, Miss Hattie shows that she is snobbish and arrogant towards people as she looked online to Gru's profile in order to see if he is a good person. She also fell for Gru's unwittingly harsh Spanish statement "You have a face como un burro" or "You have a face like a donkey" to which she thought of as a compliment.
Plot
The little girls are sent out to make money for her by selling cookies. She gets upset with the ones that do not meet their quota and puts them in the Box of Shame that's in her office, bringing out any additional boxes if necessary. Avoiding being placed in the box is how Miss Hattie "encourages" her girls to do better in their cookie sales. She also has a line of black and yellow caution tape in front of her desk that the girls have to stand behind when reporting how they did for the day. When Edith Gru put a mud pie on her desk, she is momentarily angry, then told her, "You're never going to get adopted, Edith, you know that, don't you?" A few minutes before, when Agnes Gru had asked if anyone stopped by to adopt them while she, Edith and Margo Gru are out, Miss Hattie's answer is a more emphatic "no".
When Felonius Gru came by to adopt Margo, Edith and Agnes, Miss Hattie is not very impressed with his accomplishments. After the computer records became scrambled (due to the Minions getting into a fight while updating the records in real-time), Gru sweet-talked her by telling her she had "a face como en burro", which, in Spanish, means "your face looks like a donkey." Since she can't speak Spanish, she is flattered by it and approved the adoption. She later bought a dictionary and learned what it really meant, letting Gru know she didn't like what he said by slapping him with it when she came to pick the girls back up and put them into boxes of shame. After that she was never heard from again.
Trivia
- Miss Hattie parodies Miss Hannigan from the musical Annie. They are both abusive orphanage owners both whom the children are frightened of.
- Miss Hattie is also a parody of Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter (movie and books) series. They both wear pink, have short brown hair and they are passive-aggressive child abusers.
- Miss Hattie has the same voice actress as Lucy Wilde. Ironically, in the first film, Kirsten Wiig voiced an overweight and cruel orphanage owner who was mean to the little girls, while in the sequels, she voiced a kind and motherly figure with a thin body who genuinely cared for the little girls. The same irony happened with actress Amy Yasbeck in "Problem Child" black comedy series, where in first movie her character was selfish and social-climbing wife of protagonist, Benjamin "Ben" Healy Jr., when in second movie she became caring school nurse and Ben's love interest.
- Miss Hattie may take or sponsor salsa lessons, as seen on a sticker on her computer.
