Booboo Stewart on the Dance-Filled "Descendants 3"
The Disney Channel’s Descendants movies have been fan favorites since the original’s premiere back in 2015, thanks to their huge musical numbers and powerful storylines. Following the lives of the children of four notorious Disney villains, the films are chock-full of talented dancers. (Those dancers include Cameron Boyce, whose untimely death last month devastated fans around the world.)
Ahead of the Descendants 3 premiere tonight, we talked to Booboo Stewart, who plays Jay—aka the son of Aladdin‘s Jafar—about growing up dancing with Boyce, what it’s been like to get back to his dance roots, and his love for director/choreographer Kenny Ortega.
You studied dance pretty intensively, right?
Yes. When I first got the part in Descendants, I hadn’t danced in a few years. But dancing was really my main thing for a while. I actually took classes with Cameron Boyce when we were really young, and competed at JUMP and did music videos. I recently started taking classes at Millennium Dance Complex again. Kenny Ortega is dance-world (not to mention Disney Channel) royalty.
What was it like to work with Ortega on “Descendants 3”?
Working with Kenny is probably my favorite thing about the Descendants films. He’s such a magical person, and he has such a creative mind. He’ll walk into the room and change one little thing, and you’ll be like, “Oh, yep. That is so much better.”
What’s your favorite number from the movie, and which one was most challenging for you?
My favorite and most challenging are one and the same: “Good to Be Bad.” That song is awesome! It was definitely the hardest dance piece to learn, and also probably took the longest to film because there are so many different sections of the song. But Jamal Sims, who choreographed the number with Kenny, is a groove master—he came up with the grooviest moves that made it all work.
Click here to donate to the Cameron Boyce Foundation, established in Boyce’s memory to provide resources for young creatives.
