Dove Cameron reveals emotional goodbye to ‘Descendants 3’: 'We cried a lot… it feels like Cameron is still here'

Descendants 3 star Dove Cameron has revealed how she and fellow cast members Sophia Carson, Cameron Boyce and Booboo Stewart said goodbye to the Disney TV movie franchise after wrapping filming on the soon-to-be-aired threequel - the first of which was filmed in 2014.

“We cried a lot... When we finished our last musical number, me, Sophia and Cameron - I don't know what Booboo was doing, off somewhere, as always! - we laid on the set for the finale, until they tore it down. For like, hours. We lay down on it just to be like, ‘We don't want this to end!’” revealed Cameron to Yahoo Movies, about the last day of filming their big musical scene.

“We were just crying on our phones, taking pictures and cuddling.”

Post-filming, the third movie in Disney’s live-action Descendants TV film series, which follows the lives of the children of Disney’s classic villains, became a more poignant farewell than any of the cast, or fans, could have been prepared for.

In July 2019, Cameron Boyce, who stars as Carlos, son of Cruella passed away suddenly, aged 20, as a result of an epileptic seizure. The film’s premiere was cancelled in his honour, with Disney instead making a donation to the Thirst Project, one of Boyce’s favourite charities.

Read more: Descendants 3 cast pay tribute to Cameron Boyce

“I watched it [Descendants 3] for the first time with my best friend, who's not in the film, and was ruined,” reveals Cameron, on how it feels to watch back the finale now.

“In light of recent events and in light of it being the last one, and having no premiere, and things like that, my best friend was like, ‘You know, what we're doing today? You're going to put on all of your Descendants merch, we're going to get out your crown, and we're going to cry and make brownies. And we had a marathon, and I was wrecked. I wrote for ages and mourned the loss of so much.”

“Also, then when I watched it later with Booboo at the LA screening, we kind of looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh, that wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be,” says Cameron.

“It feels like Cameron is still here, when you watch it. It wasn't as painful as we thought. And because we've all been around each other so much more recently than we usually are than when we're not doing the films. I think it's felt quite healthy, quite like, everything's still kind of the same. It's not. But if we can kind of feel like it is.”

Cameron also had some advice for young fans who may have difficulty saying goodbye to Boyce and the franchise, first released four years ago: “The things that we feel closest to are the things that we feel most seen by sometimes. I know I was that kind of kid, I grew up definitely like, music was my best friend… And for me, music was something I felt close to, something I felt like I knew, a language that I spoke... And I think a lot of people feel that way about characters that they fall in love with.

“They're like, this is my person, I feel represented by them. I feel like they're very real to me. And I can understand that.”

“I think that the best way to cope with the loss of that is - the beautiful thing about things that are created to entertain us and make us feel seen is that they exist actually mostly in our minds, even though we're watching something or reading something, really the relationship we have with it is in our mind.

“And so the beautiful thing about that is it becomes yours. And so even though these movies might not be happening anymore, those characters are yours, and they're real to you. And so they can live forever in you.”

Dove Cameron stars as ‘Mal’ in Disney Channel’s Descendants 3. The threequel of the hugely popular movie franchise will premiere on Disney Channel UK on Friday 11 October at 5.30pm.