Vernita Green, also known as Copperhead, is a character in the popular film franchise Kill Bill. She is portrayed by actress Vivica A. Fox and first appears in the first film of the series, Kill Bill: Volume 1. The actress Vivica A. Fox played this role.
Vernita is a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, a group of highly skilled assassins led by the main antagonist, Bill. She is also the mother of a young girl named Nikki Bell, whom she left behind to pursue her career as an assassin.
Character Vernita Green, also known as Copperhead, appeared in the film Kill Bill. Along with O-Ren Ishii and Elle Driver, she was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and took part in the massacre at the Two Pines Wedding Chapel. Despite being the first to be murdered, she was second on The Bride’s “Death List Five”.
Vernita, who went by the alias Jeanie Bell, was carrying on a regular life four years after the massacre. She has experience with knife fighting and hand-to-hand combat, and it is implied that she and the Bride respect each other on a professional level. They fight viciously at the beginning of the first film, wrecking Vernita’s living room during the combat. The Bride doesn’t want to kill Vernita in front of Green’s young daughter, so when Nikki, Green’s four-year-old daughter, arrives home in the middle of the fight, they stop.
Green sends Nikki to her room, where she has a coffee conversation with the Bride, confessing her betrayal and pleading for mercy on behalf of her family. They decide to meet up for a knife fight at midnight after the Bride adamantly declines. Vernita, however, breaks her word and makes an attempt to shoot the Bride while using a handgun that is cleverly hidden inside a cereal box (hence the name Kaboom). She misses, and the Bride stabs her in the heart, killing her. Nikki witnesses her death, which is something the Bride did not intend. The Bride assures Nikki that if she decides to seek revenge for her mother’s passing when she is older, she will be waiting for her. The Bride appears sad as she departs Vernita’s house and enters her car, suggesting that they had a close relationship in the past.
If Beatrix Kiddo had known her daughter was still alive, would she have decided not to kill Vernita Green?
Beatrix makes it pretty clear that she seeks vengeance rather than reconciliation from those who have wronged her. She says that despite the fact that they killed her fiancée and (almost) killed her child, she is not going to kill Vernita’s husband or daughter. She was shot in the head after the DVAS massacred her entire wedding party. None of that has changed despite BB’s survival. The two of them still have “unfinished business,” and Beatrix still desires retribution. Although it is obvious that the two of them once were friends, Beatrix has no intention of letting that stand in the way of her revenge. She would have probably gone to find BB first if she had known she was still alive, but that would have ruined the suspenseful drama.