Amy Adams Returns To Disenchanted, Idina Menzel Finally Gets A Song, and Disney Easter Eggs Explained!
Fifteen years after Enchanted, the not-so-happily ever after continues in Disenchanted. The original cast returns in this new story where Giselle questions her happiness, inadvertently turning the lives of those in the real world and Andalasia upside down in the process.
At the Disenchanted press conference, the cast and creatives gave insight into continuing the unforgettable story from Enchanted. “Sean Bailey, the president of Disney […] was talking about how the project was sitting there, and as we discussed it, I said, ‘You know Giselle's the stepmother. She's Morgan's stepmother.’ That for me became the absolute jumping-off point. I was like, ‘That's low-hanging fruit.’ This is perfect in terms of a continuation of that because she has this now-developed daughter who probably doesn't believe in magic anymore,” said director Adam Shankman. “It was just sort of a thrill ride from there. It just was a luge of finding stuff like that. But again […] the whole thing starts with Amy and Giselle.”
Amy Adams looked back at Giselle’s journey from aspiring princess to wicked stepmother. “For me, it was interesting because we were looking at where Giselle would be now. When we leave her in the last movie, there's been an evolution from the beginning of the movie of Enchanted to who Giselle is at the end of the movie. So taking that evolution of who she might be after spending 10 years [there], but also making sure we keep her grounded in sort of the truth of her feelings, without losing that joy and that naiveté and innocence and purity that makes Giselle so special. That's where my launching place was. It was so fun to get to see everybody just step back into it and that we were lucky enough to have everybody come join us,” said Adams. “It was really early on in my career, too. So this movie has meant so much to me in so many ways. I'm just grateful to get to come back and revisit Giselle at this point in my life.”
Alan Menken shared that he and Stephen Schwartz wrote for the characters and the storyline vs individual actors and that the Enchanted soundtrack seamlessly progressed into this sequel. “You start from the first Enchanted, which has the most amazing premise which is we start in the world of early Walt animation and this animated princess has a spell put on her and is thrown into Times Square where she's totally unequipped to deal with what happens. And the score kind of grows up with her as she begins to adapt to this world,” said Menken. “In the new version, she longs for that world. So we still go back to that early, very, da-da-da-da, to Andalasia. She longs for that, but there's no happy ever after in our world. Unlike an animated ending, it's a day after happy ever after […] and so she makes this wish and that just throws us into this amazing storyline, which has all this fun in it because of what happens from that wish.”
With her Broadway background in Rent and Wicked and then later becoming a Disney queen with the Frozen franchise, it was surprising Idina Menzel didn’t have a song in the first film. Menken revealed they actually attempted to write two different songs for her in Enchanted that got cut. This time around the writing duo made sure she got a soaring ballad with the original song “Love Power.” “We shot one of them,” said Menzel of the cut songs from Enchanted. “It was just superflous at the time ''cause you were trying too hard [to fit it in]. I really appreciate that. But now [they] made up for it in so many ways that I’m singing a song I could barely sing live if I tried.”
She continued: “The way they write gives you everything you need. To have somebody like them write for you, for all of us, it's such a gift. […] And, like, Alan was saying, it's the characters, but also they know our voices and they can write for our strengths.”
Just like Enchanted, the sequel also features tons of Easter eggs to classic Disney movies. “The fundamental construct, theoretically, of Enchanted is the sending up of all of the tropes. It's one of my favorite things about the movie and about participating in it because, to my knowledge, it's the first time Disney ever winked at itself,” said Shankman. “Honestly, if you look around, when the town turns into a fairy tale town, every sign of every shop has something Disney winking involved in it.”
Shankman revealed some of the Easter eggs we can expect to see in the film. “There is a not-so-subtle nod in Gabby's solo song. Actually, there's many. Every shot in that song is something that's a nod to another ‘I want’ song,” he shared. “Pip turns into Lucifer. Amy turns into many Disney villains. The magic mirror is a replica of the magic mirror from Snow White. […] Jayma [Mays] and Yvette [Nicole Brown]'s ball dresses are literally the step sisters' dresses from Cinderella.”
Disenchanted is streaming on Disney+.
