Disney dancing
Actors in for a song, and fancy footwork, as progeny of villains
When Kenny Ortega cast Cameron Boyce in the pivotal role of Carlos De Vil in the 2015 Disney TV movie Descendants, he had no idea the young actor could sing and dance.
But it turns out the 18-yearold is a genuine triple-threat talent: dancer, singer, actor. He may even be a quadruple-threat if you include the fact that, in 2015, he was already a big teen star on the Disney Channel thanks to his four years on the popular tween sitcom Jessie.
Ortega knows good dancing when he sees it. He has been working his craft professionally since he was 13. Gene Kelly was his mentor. He has worked with Michael Jackson and James Brown. He choreographed the moves of Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing and oversaw the pop-culture phenomenon that was High School Musical. But while Ortega may have been delighted to discover Boyce was already adept at song and dance, it didn’t have anything to do with why the young actor was cast as Cruella De Vil’s son Carlos in the fantasy movie and its sequel. Ortega was looking for something more.
“He made me laugh so hard in his television series, he was so charming and winning that all I could think was that I wanted him to play the part from the early onset,” says Ortega, in an interview earlier this summer at the Banff World Media Festival. “Then after he came in and everyone said I could have him, I found out this kid had been dancing his entire life and was really musical. That’s kind of what happens.”
Ortega calls it the luck of the draw. But he also points out he would never book a performer for a project like Descendants based solely on his or her singing and dancing abilities. That’s just icing on the cake.
“You want an intelligent, young individual who is ready, who has an enthusiasm for the character and an ability to bring the character to life,” says Ortega, who was in Banff to both receive the festival’s award of excellence and to discuss Descendants 2 during a master class. “If you bring an actor in who can’t do that, all the singing and dancing isn’t going to matter much. So it’s really, really important that it’s the right actor who can bring a wonderful wealth of dimension to a character in the couple of hours they have. And then you kind of hope, maybe they have something else going for them ...”
When told Ortega was not aware of his song-and-dance skills a few hours later, Boyce seems a little surprised. But he also repeats what became a common theme in Banff during discussions about the hit musical. While it may have originated it that peculiar self-sustaining parallel universe of fluffy tween entertainment, the Descendants has transcended it.
“All the actors in the movie are really strong actors, and I think they would be strong actors outside of the Disney Channel as well,” Boyce said. “I think that really works to our advantage. We were able to humble our characters while still having that sort of crazy, magical stuff going on around us.”
Of course, the magical stuff is key to the Descendants universe. For the uninitiated, the 2015 movie is about teenage sons and daughters of popular Disney villains: Boyce plays Carlos de Vil; Booboo Stewart plays Jay, Jafar’s son; Sofia Carson plays Evie, the Evil Queen’s daughter; and Dove Cameron plays Mal, Maleficent’s daughter. The four teens are allowed to attend a prep school in the United States of Auradon, which is populated with children of the nonvillainous. Through high-energy song-and-dance numbers, they learn to negotiate both the trials of teendom and the nefarious whims of their parents. It was a goofy, high-concept premise to be sure, but it became a massive hit. Variety says it reached 100 million viewers across the globe. The musical videos on the Disney YouTube channel have garnered more than a billion views and it has spawned a lucrative line of merchandising and spinoffs. That includes the sequel, which will greatly benefit from the mighty corporate reach of Disney/ABC when it debuts July 21 on five different networks, including Disney Channel Canada.
“I think they’re putting in on the Mars Rover,” jokes screenwriter and executive producer Josann McGibbon. “It’s a rumour, but you can quote me.”
McGibbon wrote the screenplay with longtime writing partner Sara Parriott. While the pair have worked on family-friendly fare before, including Three Men and a Little Lady and the animated film Chicken Little, they may be best known for their work on Desperate Housewives and The Starter Wife, which earned them both Emmy nominations.
Initially, the first Descendants was not meant to be a musical, but when the project landed Ortega, it became a no-brainer to use his experience. But despite the genre, cute premise and target audience, Parriott said they don’t necessarily think of demographics when writing.
“We try not to talk down to them,” she says. “We’ve all raised children and they don’t like that. We want to be amused when we are writing this and we want to be entertained.” “They are certain family movies that have a higher degree of snark to them,” McGibbon says. “That doesn’t fit with the Disney Channel and that’s fine because we don’t write that particularly. But they said to us from the beginning ‘Don’t act like you’re writing it for kids.’ ”
Still, with the immediate feedback that greets all forms of entertainment these days, it was easy for the writers and producers to get a feel for the characters and situations in the first film that resonated with younger viewers.
For instance, Descendants 2 will spent much more time on the Isle of the Lost, the prison island where the kids of the villains used to reside. In fact, much of the action takes place there as the four return home.
“I think we tried to pick themes that are larger,” Parriott says. “It’s not small ‘be-nice-to-yourfriends.’ In Descendants 2 it’s really about accepting who you are and that you can come from a different place and still have value. That’s a universal theme for anybody. With the theme, we’re aiming at a higher standard.”