With Spellbound now streaming on Netflix, I’m thrilled to share my spoiler-filled interviews with director Vicky Jenson and cast members Rachel Zegler, Javier Bardem, Jenifer Lewis, Tituss Burgess, and Nathan Lane.
Spellbound follows the adventures of Ellian, the tenacious young daughter of the rulers of Lumbria who must go on a daring quest to save her family and kingdom after a mysterious spell transforms her parents into monsters.
“I was crying in the booth every single time I went in, it was disgusting, but The Way It Was Before (Reprise) that we have is so beautiful and devastating. Ellian hugs her younger self and I feel like so many teenagers need that, and then adults need it equally,” Zegler expressed. “I mean, I’m constantly thinking of baby Rachel whenever I make decisions or, you know, things that really aren’t feeling good, I want to serve her more than anything. And so, when that moment came up on screen, and it wasn’t always in the film, it was a very late edition, I feel, and it was just beautiful and so, that really caught me emotionally.”
“What Spellbound is dealing with is the issues, real live issues for family, for everybody, children and adults, really learn from this movie,” Lewis commented. “It’s very entertaining, oh, it’s colorful. I’m gonna be very honest, when I saw Spellbound, I called Vicky Jenson, the director, and I said, ‘I’m spellbound.’ I was just so lit up and happy, because now we’ve got something for kids to let them know they can’t fix it, and it’s not their fault. It’s good stuff.”
“It’s such a beautiful, original, loving story and so intelligent, so generous with the audience, with the adults, and with the children. The way Vicky put it all together is very emotional and fun to watch,” Bardem said. “I think everything works at its highest level in a movie that you are going to sit down thinking that you know what you’re gonna watch, and you’re going to be very surprised about what it is about and how it resolves at the very end. And to be part of that, it is my first animated movie and it couldn’t be better. The experience couldn’t be better.”
Jenson told me, “From a storytelling point of view, we knew we needed a happy ending ‘cause you have to have a happy ending. But from a human point of view, this story had to be real. It had to be authentic to a family going through this extremely difficult time where the kids often feel like they must be messing up, ‘my parents are fighting ‘cause I’m not doing what I should be doing,’ and we didn’t want the responsibility of breaking the spell, of fixing the problem to lay on the princess, on Ellian. It’s the parents that have to do the work. So as a storyteller, it was very challenging because your hero has to go off and do things and fix things but here, our magical characters who are kind of like therapists in the story are telling her, ‘No, you can’t break the spell. It’s up to them. They created it. They have to fix it.’ So we wanted to be really true to the experiences and not vilify our parents, not vilify the situation.”
“I just sort of think it’s so beautiful to explore an alternate route that isn’t mainstream for so many people and I don’t know, to me, that was beautiful. In fact, when I read the script, I was waiting for them to turn back into the perfect parents and to resume their thrones, but then when she announced where they were living, I teared up. I was like, ‘Wow, this is… that’s proper. That’s how it actually is in some households,’ not so much in my household, but my household was also not represented in this film. But it made me go, ‘Wow, why can’t there be a cartoon about single parents,’ you know what I mean? I just thought it was great,” Burgess explained.
“I just enjoyed all of the vocal performances very much. I thought it was a pretty spectacular cast of actors and yeah, I enjoyed our big number together, Look for the Light,” Lane mentioned. “There’s a lot of talk of light and darkness in this movie.”
We talked about how the film’s ending twists what audiences expect from a happily ever after, which moments or themes resonated with them, the underrated qualities of a fairy tale, and more.
Watch my interviews here:
