Disney Channel’s Cheetah Girls panel just wrapped at TCA. Three of the young stars - Adrienne Bailon (Chanel), Kiely Williams (Aquanetta), and Sabrina Bryan (Dorinda) - stole critics hearts with their giggly, effervescent energy. The stars were here to promote the third installment of the Cheetah Girls franchise, The Cheetah Girls One World - a colorful Bollywood extravaganza filmed on location in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
Throughout the original film, there are elephants, flower petals, and ornate Indian palaces.
Disney Channel previewed the final scene, a lavish Bollywood number set to the thumping theme "One World."
Cheetah Girls premieres Friday, August 22, 2008 at 8p.
The young ladies’ chemistry was evident on stage. They sometimes operated as a single organism, often talking at once, hive-mind like - clapping and laughing and (yo!) chatting about the mix tapes their drivers made for them for their 5 a.m. rides to work. "It was like straight up house music!" said Adrienne.
Sabrina began to describe how they found out they were headed to India:
"There was interest after the second movie," she said, "they asked us where we would want to go in the world to shoot another movie, and we said a couple of names and India was one of them. And Debra [executive producer Debra Martin Chase] was like..I think that might be possssiiiiibbble!"
And suddenly all three girls squealed on stage in unison:
"And we were like, NO WAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!"
"Mumbai is third noisiest city in the world! Omg!… The bangles, the gold, the gorgeous fabric!" said Adrienne, "I have tons of bangles."
"We crashed five weddings," joked Michael Steger who plays ‘Vik’.’
Kiely summed up the latest film best:
"The three of us are facing the inevitable change of getting older and and it’s something we are slightly unprepared for…" she explained, "we’re just out of senior year of high school and going to college…we don’t really know what the future really holds for us. and how we’re actually going to stay together. We’re going off to different schools. Our lives taking us in a different directions…It’s more about us going about our separate ways…and realizing we don’t have to walk the same path to be friends and to keep the Cheetah dream alive."
More on Cheetah Girls to come, including some thoughts from executive producer Debra Martin Chase. (In the meantime, check out her 2004 interview with NPR’s Tony Cox.)
Here’s a little The Cheetah Girls One World preview:
