Disney Channel has lengthy been a popular culture springboard, minting stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Zendaya and the Jonas Brothers. However being a Disney star in 2025 appears totally different from the Hannah Montana and Camp Rock days.
Again then, the components was clear: Land successful present or film, make crossover appearances in different Disney initiatives, launch music via the Disney machine and keep a fastidiously curated, healthful picture.
International stardom got here with perks, however being a teenager navigating that world with out a roadmap made for a high-stakes balancing act, particularly in a tradition fast to decide aside Disney stars. The fortunate few, usually backed by robust help techniques, broke out past their early success.
As we speak’s Disney stars profit from the legacy however face new hurdles. Because of social media, they’re all the time on the clock — anticipated to carry out, share and current perfection 24/7. They’re manufacturers inside manufacturers earlier than they’re sufficiently old to drive.
Kylie Cantrall, 20, and Meg Donnelly, 25 — who lead the community’s largest ongoing properties, Descendants and Zombies, each musical fantasy movies — symbolize the trendy blueprint for Disney stardom.
They discuss to Yahoo about rising up Disney, from dreaming about mouse-eared stardom as women to movie- and music-making. However they’re additionally pushing again in opposition to labels, steering their careers and attempting to keep away from the inevitable “Disney star gone wild” headlines.
‘No person actually is aware of what I can do’
Disney Channel was Donnelly’s “all the pieces” rising up. A theater child from New Jersey, she began auditioning for roles on the community at age 8. Being solid within the ABC sitcom American Housewife in 2016 opened the door to Disney. A 12 months later, at age 15, she landed Zombies, after many auditions. The film was an prompt hit when it premiered in 2018, catapulting Donnelly to Disney stardom, powered by a military of tween followers.
Donnelly, on the 2025 Billboard Ladies in Music occasion, launched her first EP, Dying Artwork, in June and says the songs really feel extra her than any of her earlier music. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic through Getty Photographs)
Zombies’ hit soundtracks, with punchy pop anthems, have gone hand-in-hand with their success. “Sometime,” which Donnelly sang within the authentic movie, has 109 million streams on Spotify. Followers who seek for which will uncover her authentic songs too. That features her 2019 album Belief.
“After I was a child, it was actually onerous for me to face up for myself,” she tells Yahoo. “Quite a lot of the music I put out — although it’s nonetheless particular to me, and I do know lots of people take heed to it and so they prefer it, so I’m not attempting to discredit that in any respect — positively wasn’t 100% me.”
Wanting again, it felt like a little bit of a runaway practice.
“I positively was doing what I believed I needed to do, or listening to the individuals I believed I needed to, as a result of I used to be scared to talk up,” she says. “I’m nonetheless studying how to try this. I’m not 100% good at that.”
Feeling extra in management, Donnelly launched her new EP, Dying Artwork, in June, on the heels of showcasing her expertise because the youngest finalist on The Masked Singer. She calls the challenge a “stepping stone” to extra possession of her profession.
Then and now: Donnelly landed her function in 2018’s Zombies at age 15. For the most recent installment within the franchise, she and costar Milo Manheim additionally turned government producers as they transitioned to behind-the-scenes roles. (Disney Channel/Everett Assortment, Disney Channel)
“I did precisely what I felt comfy with and what I needed to place on the market,” she says. “It’s quite a bit totally different than the music I put out in 2019, as a result of … not that I do know who I’m now, however I actually didn’t know then.”
Whereas Donnelly is optimistic about her music profession, determining what’s subsequent in performing has been trickier. The newest Zombies film — one other hit, drawing 9.3 million views on Disney+ in its first 10 days after its July 10 premiere — marked a turning level. She’ll keep on as a producer for a possible Zombies 5 and make cameos if referred to as on, however she’s able to let the following era take the highlight.
Transitioning into post-Disney roles hasn’t come routinely — and it’s one thing she’s nonetheless studying to navigate.
“With performing, it’s a bit more durable,” she says. “In my very own insecure mind, I’m like: ‘Folks solely know me as a Disney actress. They don’t see the behind-the-scenes of all of the [audition] tapes I’m sending in and the performing work I’m doing. Nobody’s ever seen me act exterior of children’ tv or [the] sitcom world.’ That will get in my head quite a bit. I believe: ‘No person actually is aware of what I can do.’”
She’s working to point out her broader vary. Outdoors of Disney fare, Donnelly performed the lead within the CW Supernatural spin-off The Winchesters, from 2022 to 2023. Extra just lately, she was very near touchdown the lead within the upcoming live-action Supergirl movie, an element that went to Milly Alcock.
Donnelly additionally struggles with the expectation of getting to be on social media on a regular basis. She calls it “a extremely onerous factor to navigate” and says “it may be very isolating.”
With 3.1 million TikTok followers and a pair of million on Instagram, she’s deeply conscious of the function mannequin label she carries, accountable to younger followers nonetheless in single digits in addition to grownup girls her personal age.
“It’s daunting, particularly for the reason that [Zombies] films are nonetheless taking place,” she says of the steadiness between function mannequin and being a human being. “I’m all the time conscious of my kiddos who’re followers of Zombies and watching me, and no matter I submit and do and say is taken to coronary heart… My social media presence is a little more sheltered than I might be in actual life.”
Donnelly and Drake Rodger, who met making The Winchesters, are actually dwelling collectively. Taking the following step has “made us stronger” as a pair, she says. (Maya Dehlin Spach/Getty Photographs)
Donnelly, who lives along with her Winchesters costar turned boyfriend Drake Rodger, says a number of the strain she feels truly comes from exterior the Mouse Home. The general public needs to see Disney stars as one factor: youngsters.
“I really feel like Disney by no means actually places individuals in a field — like these baby actors are baby actors endlessly — it’s the general public that tends to try this,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what I do — if I say a curse phrase or no matter — it’s like ‘Disney star goes wild’ and that’s simply type of the narrative till you find yourself with the ability to get away of it.”
She provides, “We’re all gonna develop up. We’re all gonna make errors… We’re not going to be youngsters endlessly.”
Using the Disney wave to pop stardom
Cantrall began making YouTube movies of herself reviewing Disney exhibits at age 8 and, earlier than lengthy, she was showing within the exhibits, together with Gabby Duran & the Unsittables and Excessive Faculty Musical: The Musical: The Collection.
Cantrall starred in a number of Disney exhibits earlier than taking up the lead in Descendants in 2024. (Frank Micelotta/Disney through Getty Photographs)
“I used to be all the time a Disney woman, working towards the wand ID in my room in entrance of my mirror at 5 years previous,” she tells Yahoo. “I regarded as much as Zendaya and Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. I needed to be that.”
When Descendants stars Sofia Carson and Dove Cameron moved on in 2019 after efficiently launching post-Disney careers, making films and music, Cantrall was a part of the brand new era taking up. To land the lead in Descendants: The Rise of Pink, she auditioned over Zoom for greater than 40 Disney executives.
When the movie got here out in July 2024, it drew a record-breaking 6.7 million views in three days on Disney+. For comparability, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour live performance film had 4.6 million views over the identical interval when it streamed that 12 months.
Cantrall (with Malia Baker) wrapped the following Descendants movie, Depraved Wonderland, which can come out in 2026. (Disney)
With a fifth movie, Descendants: Depraved Wonderland, just lately wrapped, Disney banked on Cantrall to headline the Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide tour this summer time throughout 43 cities at venues like Madison Sq. Backyard.
Onstage, she performs not simply Disney hits — just like the title monitor “Pink,” which has drawn 58 million Spotify streams in a single 12 months — but in addition authentic songs from her debut EP, B.O.Y., which dropped in Could. It’s all a lead-up to her first full-length album, due subsequent 12 months — timed to maximise publicity across the subsequent Descendants launch.
Whereas Cantrall is aware of her Disney fan base is younger, her ambition extends past that.
“After all, a number of little youngsters know me as Pink,” she says, “but it surely’s cool seeing [the] siblings of these youngsters who’re a bit older discovering me and my very own private music.”
Cantrall is headlining the Descendants/Zombies Worlds Collide tour. She calls it “mind-boggling” to have offered out Crypto.com Enviornment in L.A., the place she noticed her first live performance — Beyoncé — simply 12 years in the past. (Disney)
Cantrall is clearly aiming past the Disney bubble. Whereas she embraces her function in Descendants — “so long as they need to hold hiring me, I’ll make I’ll make myself out there,” she says — she’s centered on constructing a music profession that additionally appeals to older teenagers and younger adults. That’s an viewers she’s steadily rising via her extra mature songs and pop aesthetic — and she or he’s not shy about the place she needs that to go.
“Hopefully I’ll go on the Kylie tour subsequent,” she says, referring to her aim of headlining like fellow Disney alumnae Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, who went from small display to pop stardom.
Not like Donnelly, Cantrall’s all in on social media. She has 8.2 million TikTok followers and 1.4 million Instagram followers and feels that exhibiting them her day-to-day is a key means of connecting along with her followers.
“The most important distinction between being a Disney star now vs. then is that we have now social media, and [fans] can get to know us on such a deeper degree,” says Cantrall, whose fandom even has a nickname: the QTs. “I’m in a position to join with so many individuals, [and] I believe individuals … have gotten to know me.”
Cantrall says she usually thinks about that youthful model of herself — the woman pretending to be onstage, now that she’s performing for 1000’s.
“I get so emotional desirous about the little model of me,” she says. “All I did was carry out — dance and sing round my home — and that’s all I’ve ever needed to do. [Sometimes I imagine her sitting] within the crowd watching … me on stage. I believe she can be so proud.”
