The Rise of Red’s Brandy Asked Rita Ora to Stop Apologizing While Filming

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Descendants: The Rise of Red.

Brandy Taught Rita Ora an Important Lesson While Filming Descendants: The Rise of Red:Stop apologizing so much!

The two pop divas star together in the fourth installment of the popular Descendants musical film franchise about the children of iconic Disney characters. They both play the mothers of the two main characters: Brandy reprises her role as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella Paolo Montalban stars as Chloe Charming’s (Malia Baker) parents, while Ora plays the ruthless Queen of Hearts, mother of Red (Kylie Cantrall). The two women come face to face when their daughters enroll at Auradon Prep, and it quickly becomes clear that the monarchs share a turbulent past together: the Queen of Hearts holds a deep grudge against Cinderella for a traumatic event that happened when they were at school together many years ago.

So when the Queen of Hearts stages a coup against Auradon, she takes the opportunity to get revenge. She captures Cinderella and threatens to decapitate her, forcing Chloe and Red to team up, travel back in time, and undo the moment that set Red’s mother on her path to villainy. “It’s iconic,” Ora says of that whole coup scene. “‘Off with her head!’ That’s a very iconic line from the Queen of Hearts, and I was trying to find my version of that.”

But while she played the role of the cold, tyrannical leader on screen, Ora couldn’t have been more opposite in real life when filming that scene with Brandy. “In every scene after that, I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it,’” Ora says. “And Brandy was like, ‘Can you stop? You’re in character, do what you have to do.’ And I was like, ‘Just remember, I love you!’ And then we’d get back into it. It was great.”

Ora still can’t get over the fact that she’s sharing the screen with one of the people she idolized growing up. “Oh my God, it’s crazy, I did a movie with Brandy!” Ora says with a smile. “I mean, I love her so much. I loved her music growing up. She was one of the singers I would try to imitate every day in my room. And watching her Cinderella “My experience with Whitney Houston was so iconic for so many reasons. It made me believe in myself, like, ‘Oh my God, I can do this too.'”

Watching Brandy blossom as a singer and actress inspired Ora to chart her own career. “It’s something I love to do and aspire to do: be a musician and an actress, and she’s been able to balance both, and that’s a top priority for me,” Ora says. “It was so much fun, she gave me so much advice, and we sang together. I love her.”

She adds with a laugh: “I think I was more fanned out than she was, but that’s okay.”

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And after the shooting Descendants: The Rise of the Red, Ora reveals she has a “newfound love for card magicians” after all the time she spent mastering the art of shuffling and flipping cards to play the Queen of Hearts. “The cards were flying everywhere,” she says. “There was a magician on set who literally taught me how to hold the cards. It was a lot of work. It’s definitely become my go-to party trick.”

Descendants: The Rise of Red is now available to stream on Disney+.