Kylie Cantrall grew up obsessed with Descendants. Like, Fourth Grade VHS-taping-the-commercials obsessed. “I vividly remember it in 2015,” she says. “Obsessed with the VKs, obsessed with the lore.” So when Disney called about Descendants: The Rise of Red, Cantrall’s inner child squealed. Her adult self? A little more suspicious.
“I’ll be the first to say, like, why are we making a sequel for something that’s already so beloved?” she admits. “It’s already so iconic. Why mess with that?” Spoken like a true fan-turned-lead.
But this isn’t a rerun. The Rise of Red isn’t trying to replace the original films—it’s playing in the same sandbox with a different set of toys. Cantrall plays Red, daughter of the Queen of Hearts, and not exactly raised on hugs and moral nuance. “Her famous catchphrase is ‘off with their head.’ So you can imagine… probably not a lot of warm and fuzzy mother-daughter love there,” Cantrall says, laughing.
The film lets her lean into that classic antihero arc: identity crisis meets magical lineage meets time-travel hijinks. “She’s pulled between what she knows and who she wants to be,” Cantrall explains. “She doesn’t want to be a villain, but she doesn’t know what else she’s allowed to be either.”
It’s complicated. And not just emotionally. “We shot it all out of order, of course,” she says. “So some days Malia [Baker] and I would film scenes where our characters hate each other, and then later that day shoot one where we’re best friends. I had to constantly be like, okay, where is Red in her journey right now?”
Helping navigate that evolution is the very trippy setting of Wonderland, which gets a surreal visual revamp this time around. “Wonderland has this elusive kind of energy,” Cantrall says. “Then you’ve got Auradon, which is bright and electric, and Merlin Academy, which feels nostalgic when we go back in time. It’s cool to see all these reimagined worlds collide.”
Did I mention the time travel? The Rise of Red is a full-blown genre spin. “Time travel’s my favorite,” she grins. “I’d totally go back to the ‘90s. I just think the art and fashion and music were at their peak. And now it’s all coming back.”
Case in point: Brandy. Yes, that Brandy, back again as Cinderella. “That was so surreal,” Cantrall says. “My dad introduced me to her music when I was younger, and I was like, ‘Whoa, how does someone sing like that?’ She was such a big inspiration for me. So to actually work with her was unreal.”
Beyond the acting, Cantrall’s quietly flexing her songwriting chops. Her 10 Minute Songs, Vol. 1 project is exactly what it sounds like: fans throw out three words, and she builds songs from scratch in ten minutes. “It was completely driven by the fans,” she says. “Otherwise, I never would’ve put them out. I’d have overthought it all to death.”
In fact, working under pressure might be her ideal method. “When I don’t have time to second guess myself, I actually finish things,” she says. “In a normal session, without the three words to guide me, I spiral.”
The music is still coming. Singles like “Unsure” and “All Boo’d Up” hint at a bigger project, though Cantrall is cagey about a timeline. “I want it to be perfect,” she shrugs. “I’ve had a crazy sound change behind the scenes that people haven’t heard yet. I’ve got songs in all types of genres, but now I finally feel like I’ve found the one that really fits.”
So while Red’s figuring herself out on-screen, Kylie’s doing the same off-screen—in between fan challenges, cinematic fairy tales, and holding her own next to actual 1990s royalty. “I just want to make the best music that makes me happy,” she says. “And maybe someday, a fourth grader will be obsessed with that.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
