The Rise of Red’s’ Brandy told 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 movie musical franchise about the children of iconic Disney characters. They both play the mothers to the two main characters: Brandy reprises her role from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Paolo Montalban to play parents to Chloe Charming (Malia Baker), while Ora plays the ruthless Queen of Hearts, mother to Red (Kylie Cantrall). The two women come face-to-face when their daughters enroll in Auradon Prep, and it soon becomes clear the monarchs share a checkered past together — the Queen of Hearts holds a massive 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 uses it as a chance to get revenge. She captures Cinderella and threatens to behead her, forcing Chloe and Red to team up, travel to the past, and undo the moment that set Red’s mother down her villainous path. “Iconic,” Ora says of that entire coup scene. “‘Off with her head!’ It’s a very iconic quote for Queen of Hearts, and I was trying to find my version of that.”

But while she was playing the cold, tyrannical ruler onscreen, Ora couldn’t have been more opposite in real life while filming that scene with Brandy. “Every scene after that, I would be like, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t mean it,'” Ora says. “And Brandy’s like, ‘Can you stop? You are in character, do what you need to do.’ And I was like, ‘But 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 gosh, 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 vocalists that I would try and imitate every day in my bedroom. And watching her Cinderella with Whitney Houston was so iconic for so many reasons. It made me believe in myself — like, ‘Oh my goodness, I can do this too.'”

Watching Brandy flourish as both a singer and an actor inspired Ora as she charted her own career. “That’s something that I love to do and that I aspire to be: a musician and an actor at the same time, and she was able to balance both, and that’s a huge priority for me,” Ora says. “This was so fun, and she gave me so much advice, and we sang together. I love her.”

She adds with a laugh, “I think I was more fanning out than she was, but it’s fine.”

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And after filming Descendants: The Rise of Red, Ora reveals she has a “newfound love for card magicians” after all of the time she spent on mastering the art of shuffling and flipping cards to portray the Queen of Hearts. “Cards flying everywhere,” she says. “There was a magician on set, literally teaching me how to hold cards. A lot went into this. It’s definitely become my party trick.”

Descendants: The Rise of Red is now streaming on Disney+.