The Villains Of Valley View Stars Isabella Pappas and Kayden Muller-Janssen Talk Supervillain Stunts and Fanning Out Over Their Co-Stars
Villains are taking over the neighborhood in Disney’s brand new series The Villains of Valley View as we follow a family of supervillains who have gone into hiding and have to pretend to be regular humans. I spoke with Isabella Pappas, Kayden Muller-Janssen, and the rest of the cast at The Villains of Valley View junket about doing stunts and fanning out over their co-stars.
Pappas tackles her first comedy role playing Amy, also known as the supervillain Havoc, who has sonic powers. When she stands up to the head of the League of Villains, her family is forced to go on the run. “Amy is unlike any character I've ever played before. [She] was this breath of fresh air. She's so opinionated, she's so blunt, she says whatever she thinks, she has no filter, and she has no preconceptions about what you're meant to do in a certain situation because she's never really lived a normal life. That was really fun to play with,” she told me during the junket. “I love playing a supervillain. I love the stunts, which I now get to do most of myself. It's made me feel really strong and empowered to be able to play a character like this. I've discovered a lot of things about myself that I [hadn’t known] before, which you don't expect that when you're filming a sitcom.”
Speaking of stunts, Pappas shared that she first one she got to do on her own was her favorite moment on set. “The first stunt I got to do on my own was a stunt where I was hooked up to wires and I was dropped from ceiling and then caught like a little bit above the ground. I was so scared at first and I never thought that I would be brave enough to be able to do that by myself and I did it and I just remember having this rush and just thinking, ‘This is so fun. I want to do this a billion times,’” she said. “So I kept trying to purposefully mess up and go, ‘I really think we need another take, I was doing something weird with my face,’ just because I wanted to keep doing it. It was so fun. It was like a roller coaster.”
Kayden Muller-Janssen takes on her first series regular role as the kind hearted Hartley, Amy's new best friend and neighbor who learns about the family’s secret identity. “This is my first big breakout role into the industry and being surrounded by established actors like James [Patrick Stuart] and Lucy [Davis] and especially Izzy [Pappas]. They all have such diverse backgrounds in their acting. Being able to be on this show with them and learn so much from them, it's been an amazing opportunity,” she shared. “Even James complimented me once on how I did a line he was like, ‘The comedic beats of that were amazing.’ Having somebody like James Patrick Stuart tell you you’re good on the show was like, ‘Oh my—thank you so much!’ It's been an awesome learning experience.”
Both Pappas and Muller-Janssen are huge fans of their co-stars — especially Lucy Davis and Patricia Belcher. “Kayden and I were both obsessed with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. When I met [Lucy Davis] on the Zoom in chemistry reads with the women who were reading to play my mom, I screamed, ‘I love you!’ It just it came out of my mouth and I went, ‘Oh my, oh, that's so unprofessional, I'm so sorry’ and she was just the best,” shared Pappas. “And Patricia Belcher who plays Kayden's grandma — we both love her because she was Ms. Dabney from Good Luck Charlie so we were already obsessed with her — but she's also like the nicest person to work with and she's just so funny. I always say she could read a list of ingredients from a cookbook and I would be wheezing laughing.”
Muller-Janseen continued: “Every time we have a run-through and Izzy and I aren't in the scenes and we're watching it Patricia Belcher, we are dying laughing. We have to cover each other's mouths to make sure that we're not making noise to interrupt because of how funny she is.”
The Villains of Valley View is currently streaming on Disney+, with episodes airing on Disney Channel every Friday.
