They grew up Disney. Meg Donnelly and Kylie Cantrall are ready to take it from here.

Yahoo

5 hours ago

The stars of "Zombies" and "Descendants" talk to Yahoo about what Disney stardom looks like in 2025.
Disney Channel has long been a pop culture springboard, minting stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Zendaya and the Jonas Brothers. But being a Disney star in 2025 looks different from the Hannah Montana and Camp Rock days.
Back then, the formula was clear: Land a hit show or movie, make crossover appearances in other Disney projects, release music through the Disney machine and maintain a carefully curated, wholesome image.
Global stardom came with perks, but being a young person navigating that world without a roadmap made for a high-stakes balancing act, especially in a culture quick to pick apart Disney stars. The lucky few, often backed by strong support systems, broke out beyond their early success.
Today's Disney stars benefit from the legacy but face new hurdles. Thanks to social media, they're always on the clock — expected to perform, share and present perfection 24/7. They're brands within brands before they're old enough to drive.
Kylie Cantrall, 20, and Meg Donnelly, 25 — who lead the network's biggest ongoing properties, Descendants and Zombies, both musical fantasy films — represent the modern blueprint for Disney stardom.
They talk to Yahoo about growing up Disney, from dreaming about mouse-eared stardom as girls to movie- and music-making. But they're also pushing back against labels, steering their careers and trying to avoid the inevitable 'Disney star gone wild' headlines.
'Nobody really knows what I can do'
Disney Channel was Donnelly's 'everything' growing up. A theater kid from New Jersey, she started auditioning for roles on the network at age 8. Being cast in the ABC sitcom American Housewife in 2016 opened the door to Disney. A year later, at age 15, she landed Zombies, after many auditions. The movie was an instant hit when it premiered in 2018, catapulting Donnelly to Disney stardom, powered by an army of tween fans.
Zombies' hit soundtracks, with punchy pop anthems, have gone hand-in-hand with their success. 'Someday,' which Donnelly sang in the original film, has 109 million streams on Spotify. Fans who search for that may discover her original songs too. That includes her 2019 album Trust.
'When I was a kid, it was really hard for me to stand up for myself,' she tells Yahoo. 'A lot of the music I put out — even though it's still special to me, and I know a lot of people listen to it and they like it, so I'm not trying to discredit that at all — definitely wasn't 100% me.'
Looking back, it felt like a bit of a runaway train.
'I definitely was doing what I thought I had to do, or listening to the people I thought I had to, because I was scared to speak up,' she says. 'I'm still learning how to do that. I'm not 100% good at that.'
Feeling more in control, Donnelly released her new EP, Dying Art, in June, on the heels of showcasing her talent as the youngest finalist on The Masked Singer. She calls the project a 'stepping stone' to more ownership of her career.
'I did exactly what I felt comfortable with and what I wanted to put out there,' she says. 'It's a lot different than the music I put out in 2019, because … not that I know who I am now, but I really didn't know then.'
While Donnelly is optimistic about her music career, figuring out what's next in acting has been trickier. The latest Zombies movie — another hit, drawing 9.3 million views on Disney+ in its first 10 days after its July 10 premiere — marked a turning point. She'll stay on as a producer for a potential Zombies 5 and make cameos if called on, but she's ready to let the next generation take the spotlight.
Transitioning into post-Disney roles hasn't come automatically — and it's something she's still learning to navigate.
'With acting, it's a bit harder,' she says. 'In my own insecure brain, I'm like: 'People only know me as a Disney actress. They don't see the behind-the-scenes of all the [audition] tapes I'm sending in and the acting work I'm doing. No one's ever seen me act outside of kids' television or [the] sitcom world.' That gets in my head a lot. I think: 'Nobody really knows what I can do.''
She's working to show her broader range. Outside of Disney fare, Donnelly played the lead in the CW Supernatural spin-off The Winchesters, from 2022 to 2023. More recently, she was very close to landing the lead in the upcoming live-action Supergirl film, a part that went to Milly Alcock.
Donnelly also struggles with the expectation of having to be on social media all the time. She calls it 'a really hard thing to navigate' and says 'it can be very isolating.'
With 3.1 million TikTok followers and 2 million on Instagram, she's deeply aware of the role model label she carries, responsible to young fans still in single digits as well as adult women her own age.
'It's daunting, especially since the [Zombies] movies are still happening,' she says of the balance between role model and being a human being. 'I am always aware of my kiddos who are fans of Zombies and watching me, and whatever I post and do and say is taken to heart... My social media presence is a bit more sheltered than I would be in real life.'
Donnelly, who lives with her Winchesters costar turned boyfriend Drake Rodger, says a lot of the pressure she feels actually comes from outside the Mouse House. The public wants to see Disney stars as one thing: kids.
'I feel like Disney never really puts people in a box — like these child actors are child actors forever — it's the public that tends to do that,' she says. 'No matter what I do — if I say a curse word or whatever — it's like 'Disney star goes wild' and that's just kind of the narrative until you end up being able to break out of it.'
She adds, 'We're all gonna grow up. We're all gonna make mistakes… We're not going to be children forever.'
Riding the Disney wave to pop stardom
Cantrall started making YouTube videos of herself reviewing Disney shows at age 8 and, before long, she was appearing in the shows, including Gabby Duran & the Unsittables and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
'I was always a Disney girl, practicing the wand ID in my room in front of my mirror at 5 years old,' she tells Yahoo. 'I looked up to Zendaya and Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. I wanted to be that.'
When Descendants stars Sofia Carson and Dove Cameron moved on in 2019 after successfully launching post-Disney careers, making movies and music, Cantrall was part of the new generation taking over. To land the lead in Descendants: The Rise of Red, she auditioned over Zoom for more than 40 Disney executives.
When the film came out in July 2024, it drew a record-breaking 6.7 million views in three days on Disney+. For comparison, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert movie had 4.6 million views over the same period when it streamed that year.
With a fifth film, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, recently wrapped, Disney banked on Cantrall to headline the Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide tour this summer across 43 cities at venues like Madison Square Garden.
Onstage, she performs not just Disney hits — like the title track 'Red,' which has drawn 58 million Spotify streams in one year — but also original songs from her debut EP, B.O.Y., which dropped in May. It's all a lead-up to her first full-length album, due next year — timed to maximize exposure around the next Descendants release.
While Cantrall knows her Disney fan base is young, her ambition extends beyond that.
'Of course, a lot of little kids know me as Red,' she says, 'but it's cool seeing [the] siblings of those kids who are a bit older discovering me and my own personal music.'
Cantrall is clearly aiming beyond the Disney bubble. While she embraces her role in Descendants — 'as long as they want to keep hiring me, I'll make I'll make myself available,' she says — she's focused on building a music career that also appeals to older teens and young adults. That's an audience she's steadily growing through her more mature songs and pop aesthetic — and she's not shy about where she wants that to go.
'Hopefully I'll go on the Kylie tour next,' she says, referring to her goal of headlining like fellow Disney alumnae Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, who went from small screen to pop stardom.
Unlike Donnelly, Cantrall's all in on social media. She has 8.2 million TikTok followers and 1.4 million Instagram followers and feels that showing them her day-to-day is a key way of connecting with her fans.
'The biggest difference between being a Disney star now vs. then is that we have social media, and [fans] can get to know us on such a deeper level,' says Cantrall, whose fandom even has a nickname: the QTs. 'I'm able to connect with so many people, [and] I think people … have gotten to know me.'
Cantrall says she often thinks about that younger version of herself — the girl pretending to be onstage, now that she's performing for thousands.
'I get so emotional thinking about the little version of me,' she says. 'All I did was perform — dance and sing around my house — and that's all I've ever wanted to do. [Sometimes I imagine her sitting] in the crowd watching … me on stage. I think she would be so proud.'