Madison Reyes is livin’ on the Edge…
Netflix has released a music video teaser from Kenny Ortega’s new musical-dramedy Julie and the Phantoms, starring the young Latina actress.
The acoustic performance features Reyes and the rest of the main cast singing “Edge of Great,” an original song from the show’s soundtrack.
Created by Ortega, who directed Disney’s High School Musical and Descendants, the series will start streaming on Netflix on September 10.
Reyes stars as Julie, a high schooler who lost her passion for music after her mom died last year. But when the ghosts of three dreamy musicians (played by Charlie Gillespie, Jeremy Shada and Owen Patrick Joyner) from 1995 suddenly appear in her mom’s old music studio, Julie feels her own inner spirit begin to reawaken and is inspired to start singing and writing songs again. As their friendship with Julie grows, the boys convince her to create a new band together: Julie and the Phantoms.
Though the show is based on Julie e os Fantasmas, a Brazilian television series for children produced by Rede Bandeirantes in partnership with Nickelodeon Brazil, EP and choreographer Ortega said the Netflix original will not follow the original too closely. Ortega said “we were given complete license to explore through the boundaries of what it was and to begin anew. That’s what excited me. This was really a completely new exploration of the idea.”
Playing the titular role, Reyes disclosed that providing visible role models that reflected her identity is what drove and inspired her to play the character of Julie.
“I definitely push myself to follow my dream more for my family and also for my little sister. I wanted her to have someone she could look up to that looked like her and that she could have a connection with whether it be my ethnicity or curly hair. It was about making sure that my sister had somebody that she could look up to. I wanted to be that role model for her. That was what motivated me to follow my dreams,” said Reyes.
Booboo Stewart, Cheyenne Jackson, Carlos Ponce, Sonny Bustamante, Jadah Marie, Sacha Carlson and Savannah Lee May round out the cast.
Some episodes of the single-camera series are directed Ortega. The series hails from Ortega’s one-year deal with Netflix, which he inked last year.
