Brandy is back in her role as Cinderella. She is wearing a ball gown, jewels, and a sparkly crown.
On the set of the original movie Descendants: The Rise of Red, Disney+ showed the actress, singer, and producer working with her Prince Charming, actor Paolo Montalban, whose character is now called King Charming. (This project used to be called “The Pocketwatch.”)
It is part of Disney’s Descendants saga, which is about the kids of Disney characters when they are teenagers. The Rise of Red part follows the “imaginative mythology of two new lands, idyllic Auradon and the ragtag Isle of the Lost,” where the children of Maleficent, Cruella de Vil, Jafar, and other bad guys live. It also introduces “the hostile unincorporated territory of Wonderland, a magical, mysterious place made famous in Alice in Wonderland.”
The story is mostly about Cinderella’s daughter Chloe, who is played by Malia Baker of The Baby-Sitters Club, and Red, who is played by Kylie Cantrall and is the daughter of the Queen of Hearts.
When the tyrannical Queen of Hearts incites a coup against Auradon, polar opposites Red and Chloe must join forces and travel back in time to undo the traumatic event that set Red’s mother down her villainous path,
Disney teased.
The news about Montalban’s role didn’t come out until Wednesday. Even though the main characters from the TV movie will be back in the new Descendants, not everyone will be there. Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters, Victor Garber, and Jason Alexander, who were all in Cinderella before, are not expected to come back. Whitney Houston, who played Cinderella’s fairy godmother in a memorable way, died in 2012.
Brandy has said in the past that the production, which was nominated for seven Emmy Awards and won one for art direction, meant a lot to her.
My dream when I was a young girl was to be a singer, have my own band and meet Whitney Houston. That was it,
Brandy said in August 2022.
I had no idea that my destiny would take me to a role [like] Cinderella, [or that I would] be the first woman of color to play her. And then for Whitney Houston to be my fairy godmother… you gotta be kidding me.
Still, Brandy said, her favorite part of the whole thing was something that didn’t happen on screen.
It’s in the studio with Whitney,
said, Brandy.
Paolo Montalban, who is Filipino American, said in August 2022 that he thought the entertainment industry was not ready for the “colorblind casting” of the original Cinderella, but that society was. But he said that in the 25 years since the movie came out, the industry had caught up.
You can see examples of it in other period-type dramas that have nontraditional casting like Bridgerton,
he said.
Or you have people of color playing traditionally Caucasian characters in history in, say, Hamilton, right? So I think that that proof of concept that we did back in 1997 has permeated throughout the industry in a very positive way.
