Before starring in blockbusters like “Dune: Part Two” and Marvel’s “Spider-Man” trilogy, Zendaya was known as a teen star on the Disney Channel series “Shake It Up” and “KC Undercover.” But according to a former Disney Channel casting executive, the actor could have been part of another of the network’s projects: the “Descendants” franchise.
Cornelia Frame, former vice president of casting and talent relations at Disney Channel, revealed this in a recent interview on the Podcast ‘Magical Rewind’ that Zendaya auditioned for an undisclosed role in “Descendants.”
“Zendaya auditioned for ‘Descendants’ a lot, and that was a big deal,” Frame said. “I mean, it’s really important that she auditioned over and over again. She really wanted it, but in the end it didn’t go her way.
Frame noted that Zendaya put “so much effort and so much work” into these auditions, but ultimately “it’s just one of those things.”
She continued, “Now that I think about it, I think, ‘Could ‘Spider-Man’ have happened at the exact same time?’ Things happen for a reason, and you often book something else that’s great when you don’t get anything else.”
Although Zendaya hadn’t booked the role in “Descendants,” she already had two Disney Channel original films on her resume: 2012’s “Frenemies” and 2014’s “Zapped.” She then lent her voice to songs in the musical film “The Greatest Showman’ from 2017, in which she starred opposite Hugh Jackman and fellow Disney star Zac Efron.
The first three “Descendants” films starred Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Booboo Stewart and Cameron Boyce as the teenage children of classic Disney villains. The original was released in 2015 and was followed by two sequels in 2017 and 2019.