Star Wars actress Kelly Marie Tran will voice the titular charcater Raya in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. Tran is joined by Awkwafina who plays the Sisu, a dragon in human form who needs Raya’s help to reclaim her power and become her true dragon self.
Raya and the Last Dragon is a movie of many firsts — one of which no one saw coming, not even its creators. The upcoming film will be one of the first Disney Animation features to be developed from remote locations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With production ramping up around March just as the pandemic hit, the Raya team had to quickly reshuffle, working with equipment at home and communicating through Zoom. Despite the challenges, director Don Hall says the studio’s various teams rallied to create what he calls “the most beautiful animated film I’ve ever seen.” As the filmmaker behind beloved pictures like Winnie the Pooh, Big Hero 6, and Moana, Hall knows what he’s talking about.
Also announced are Hall and Carlos López Estrada as directors, while playwright Qui Nguyen is joining Crazy Rich Asians scribe Adele Lim as co-writer. Paul Briggs and John Ripa serve as co-directors.
“As filmmakers, Don and Carlos bring a combination of animation know-how and emotional storytelling to Raya and the Last Dragon, bringing our fantasy adventure to surprising, original, and dynamic heights,” Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Lee says in a statement to EW. “They both saw the potential for this film and had a strong vision for the story, especially for our lead character, played by the wonderfully talented Kelly Marie Tran. And no small feat, directors Don and Carlos, writers Qui and Adele, and the entire crew of 400 Disney Animation artists are making this film together, while separated and working from home.”
Not only will Raya be Disney Animation Studios’ first movie inspired by Southeast Asia, but Tran is the first Southeast Asian actress to lead a film from the company.
López Estrada, who helmed the critically acclaimed Blindspotting, says he never believed the fabled Hollywood casting stories — until he witnessed Tran’s audition. After her first recording session, he and Hall could only look at each other in stunned silence.
“I’m never going to forget it,” López Estrada tells EW. “I think [Don and I] rode in the car together, and we were quiet, looking at each other and nodding our heads just being like, ‘Yep, yep, yep. Kelly’s perfect.’”
Put simply, Hall says “she is Raya — just her buoyancy and her positivity, but yet there’s a strength as well to Kelly and the character.”
The filmmakers praise Tran’s comedy and ad-lib skills — which she says she honed at various improv schools throughout her career — but it was the level of emotion she brought to the role that really surprised them.
López Estrada says Tran’s session blew them away so much that they changed a scene to match her performance.
“We had this little dramatic moment; it was written as a few lines. And I remember her going, ‘Hey, I have some ideas because this is normally how I would say this or I have some questions. Do you mind if I tried it a little bit differently?’” the director recalls. “She went for it, improvised for a minute, and had us all in tears. We changed the scene and reblocked the animation so that it would follow what Kelly did that day because she just clicked on something that was so much bigger than anything we had imagined.”
Tran, who many audiences know as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, tells EW that Raya, the daughter of a chief, redefines the classic Disney princess. López Estrada also teases we can look forward to chases, fight scenes, and more “high-octane” action from our heroine.
“She is someone who is technically a princess but I think that what’s really cool about this project, about this character, specifically is that everyone’s trying to flip the narrative on what it means to be a princess,” Tran says. “Raya is totally a warrior. When she was a kid, she was excited to get her sword. And she grows up to be a really badass, gritty warrior and can really take care of herself.”
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