'Descendants 4' taught cast about friendship, performance
LOS ANGELES, July 10 (UPI) -- Malia Baker, Kylie Cantrall, Morgan Dudley and their co-stars said Descendants: The Rise of Red, premiering Friday on Disney+, includes lessons for viewers and themselves as performers.
The fourth film in the Disney Channel Original movie franchise introduces a new class of Disney villain daughters at Auradon Prep. Red (Cantrall) and Chloe (Baker) travel back in time to try to prevent Red's mother, the Queen of Hearts (Rita Ora), from turning evil.
"From the first Descendants, I learned a lot about mother-daughter relationships, about complex relationships and a lot of female friendships," Malia, 17, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
The first trilogy of films focused on Mal (Dove Cameron), the daughter of Maleficent (Kristin Chenoweth) and Evie (Sofia Carson), the daughter of Snow White's Evil Queen (Kathy Najimy).
"Evie and Mal really were such a duo that I think we all aspired to have a friendship like theirs one day," Malia said.
Morgan said those films inspired her to become a performer, a career she began in 2020. She now hopes The Rise of Red inspires another generation of performers.
"Disney Channel Original movie musicals specifically are a big reason that I wanted to be a performer when I was really little," Morgan said. "It's really cool to join the family and to be among so many amazing people."
Cantrall, 19, was already a pop star when she joined the Disney family in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series Season 4. Cantrall played a TikTok star cast in a fictional High School Musical 4.
Cantrall said she brought performance lessons from that show to her Descendants film.
"There's so much physicality with that character, and I really had to think about how she walks and her posture," Cantrall said, adding that she focused on Red's "physicality and how she carries herself."
In the past, Red and Chloe met their mothers' young versions. Before she became the Queen of Hearts, Bridget (Ruby Rose Turner) was a nice girl.
Young Cinderella (Morgan), or Ella for short, was part of a group of girls who bullied Bridget. Ulyana (Dara Reneé) leads the group of bullies who reign over them all.
Turner, 18, and Morgan, studied their adult counterparts even though their characters are quite different as teenagers.
"Brandy's somebody I've looked up to for a super duper long time," Morgan said.
Though they do not have scenes with Norwood or Ora, Morgan said she was "taking notes from afar and admiring their presences and beauties and trying to fill in the gap of the timeline with our characters."
In the present-day scenes, Cantrall has a duet with Ora. who has been recording and performing since 2012, Cantrall said she considered her an influence when she began releasing her music five years later.
"I have listened to tons of Rita Ora growing up," Cantrall said. "Getting to sing on a song with her was definitely one of those really, really cool moments."
Songs like "Life Is Sweeter" introduce the characters in the past and give the whole ensemble lyrics to sing. Turner said the song also establishes how different younger Bridget was.
"It really introduced me to the kind of character that I was going to play," Turner said of "Life Is Sweeter."
Other songs are character specific. Reneé, 23, sings "Perfect Revenge" as an ode to her villainy.
"In the studio, they were like, 'Listen, she's already gone through her transformation and now she's officially all the way evil,'" Reneé said."It's so fun being someone outside of yourself."
