Turning Red Star Rosalie Chiang Offers Tips For Performing Arts Kids

Turning Red star Rosalie Chiang offered up some advice for young viewers looking to break into the performing arts. She plays Mei in the beloved Pixar movie. Despite some media shouting, Turning Red is still crushing the streaming landscape right now. It’s been the number one movie on Disney+ for weeks now. Disney Parks Blog caught up with the star to hear about her story. She loved working on Turning Red and is amazed at the fan response to all of their work. You can see what Chiang had to say down below in the YouTube clip.

Comicbook.com actually had the chance to speak with the Turning Red star. She thinks the film is broad enough that the themes can be open to interpretation. “I think it’s the different messages that people picked up on. I feel like, when I first saw the movie, I thought, “Oh yeah, this is just about change. This is about messiness.” However, we’ve talked to many people, and I feel like they’ve all kind of picked up their own thing. That just shows how universal this movie is, and how anyone can enjoy it and pick up their own thing from it.”

When the topic switched to the mother/daughter relationship at the center of Turning Red, the actress thought Mei had some points. “Ooh. I mean, as Sandra takes the parents, I take the kids’ side, because I’m still a kid. And I went through what Mei went through — besides turning into a giant red panda. But I think in both sides, either side is well intentioned,” she explained. “There’s no malice. There’s [not] any malicious intent behind any of the characters’ actions. I think that’s really important to understand, that the kid isn’t trying to rebel. It’s not like when we have a difference in opinion, it doesn’t mean that we’re trying to argue or…”

“For us, it was just important not to shy away from all of the awkward, cringey moments and memories that we all had of being a tween,” director and co-writer Domee Shi explained to the site this year. “Moments of being under your bed and going into a lusty drawing spiral in your secret sketchbook, or of magical puberty hitting you in the middle of class of your classroom and your mom horribly embarrassing you. I think for us, if it could give us a visceral reaction in the story room, we knew we had to put it somewhere in the movie. I think, if the whole message of the movie is Mei embracing all of this messy change in her life, her body, her relationship with her mom and her friends, that meant we also had to embrace the mess in our childhood and adolescence as well.”

Are you watching Turning Red over the weekend? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!