Rachel Zegler performs both Princess Ellian’s speaking voice and singing voice in Spellbound. Her work began before she officially had the role: she recorded scratch vocals for Alan Menken, and parts of her early recording of “What About Me?” remained in the finished film. Once cast, she carried Ellian’s emotional arc through dialogue and songs recorded for animation.
The film gives her a demanding part. Ellian is the teenage princess of Lumbria, whose parents have been transformed into monsters by a spell. She hides their condition from the kingdom and leaves on a quest to reverse it. That story places Ellian under pressure from the opening scenes, so Zegler’s performance has to hold humor, frustration, fear, anger, and grief without a camera catching a raised eyebrow or a change in posture. Netflix Tudum’s Spellbound guide identifies Zegler as Ellian and details how the songs trace that journey.
Her voice was part of the character from the start
Zegler had already worked on Spellbound material about five years before the film’s release. She told Netflix that she had been recording scratch vocals in her attic to help Menken, before she was officially cast as Ellian. A scratch vocal is an early recording used while a song or sequence is still being developed. It does not mean the whole musical performance was made there.
One piece did survive that early stage. Zegler said that parts of “What About Me?” recorded in her attic made it into the final cut. That detail matters because “What About Me?” is Ellian’s sharpest emotional song. Glenn Slater described it as the point where Ellian voices anger over having to carry her parents’ emotions, being neglected, and growing up too quickly. The surviving early vocal material belongs to a song built around a raw outburst, which helps explain why the production kept it.
The recording history also shows that Zegler’s relationship with Ellian did not begin on the final recording schedule. She first helped with Menken’s material, then became the performer whose voice shaped the finished character. The evidence supports a limited claim: some of her attic-recorded material appears in the film. It does not support the broader claim that she recorded the entire song, or the entire soundtrack, there.
Acting when the audience cannot see you
Animation asks an actor to build a performance from sound. Zegler described recording a whole film from a booth as different because every part of the emotional performance has to come through the microphone. Viewers cannot see the actor’s face. Animators later take the recorded performance and develop it further on screen.
That division of work is central to Ellian. Zegler supplies voice, timing, breath, tone, and song. The animation team turns those choices into a princess moving through Lumbria, confronting ministers, traveling toward the Lake of Light, and facing her parents. Her vocal performance has to give them material with enough feeling and clarity to animate.
Director Vicky Jenson praised the qualities she heard in Zegler’s voice: power, vulnerability, groundedness, and humanity. Those are Jenson’s observations, not a technical description of a recording method. Still, they fit the film’s needs. Ellian has royal duties, but the character is also a daughter trying to understand a painful change in her family. A performance that leaned only toward fairy-tale grandeur would miss the family story underneath the magic.
The booth also changes the work of a sung scene. A singer can use volume, phrasing, held notes, breaks in the voice, and silence to show a character’s state. An actor can make a line small, impatient, weary, or defiant. In an animated musical, those choices give the animators a foundation. Zegler said she placed the performance in the hands of many talented animators, who took it further.
Menken and Slater wrote with Zegler in mind
Alan Menken composed the music for Spellbound, and Glenn Slater wrote its lyrics. Slater said that Zegler was a rare talent because she had a strong voice and understood Ellian and the style of the character’s singing quickly. He said that, once the creative team knew she had the part, they considered her voice while writing: where they could give her big notes and where she could draw on the audience’s emotions.
That is more specific than saying the songs were simply “tailored” to her. The team was making choices about range, dramatic peaks, and the way Ellian’s feelings would land. Zegler did not merely arrive after the songs were fixed. Her casting informed later creative decisions about how those songs could use her voice.
The film contains nine original songs. They do different jobs, rather than repeating one musical mood. “My Parents Are Monsters” introduces Ellian, Lumbria, and the tasks she has taken on because her parents can no longer govern themselves. “The Way It Was Before” looks back at the family life Ellian misses. “What About Me?” lets her anger surface. “My Monsters Are Parents” returns to the energy of the opening number, according to Menken.
That spread gives Zegler room to play Ellian at several emotional temperatures. One song can establish the princess’s daily burden. Another can slow down and let loss register. A later number can refuse restraint. The character’s voice changes because the situation changes.
“What About Me?” carries Ellian’s hardest moment
“What About Me?” has a special place in discussions of Zegler’s performance because it connects the early scratch recording to Ellian’s central conflict. Slater called it the flip side of Ellian’s “I-want” song. In his description, Ellian demands something she wants even though she cannot have it. The song is not written to make her a villain. It gives her a human response to years of pressure.
The scene comes after Ellian’s parents learn that their marriage cannot continue. Their arguing and anger are revealed as the reason they became monsters. When they ask Ellian for time to work things out, she finally speaks from her own hurt. The film places her feelings beside theirs. Their separation affects their daughter, and the song refuses to treat her as a bystander.
Zegler’s early vocal fragment therefore serves a song that has a defined dramatic purpose. It is not just a production anecdote. The creative team retained some of it in a number about Ellian’s anger, neglect, and forced maturity. Slater said the release of those feelings had to happen for Ellian to complete her journey.
The quieter side of Ellian’s singing
Ellian’s performance is not built only on big notes. Zegler called “The Way It Was Before” one of the film’s more emotional songs. She described it as a ballad in which Ellian longs for the time when her parents were human and she felt loved by them. That gives her a quieter task: she has to communicate memory and loss without pushing the song into the same register as Ellian’s anger.
“Look for the Light” has another musical character. Menken said he and the team wanted a simple folk feel, with a childlike quality, while the number moves through several sections and explains the coming journey. “Remembering” avoids a standard verse-and-chorus structure. Slater said Menken connected musical themes at the piano to reach a quiet, reflective interior moment.
These descriptions show why the part needs both an actor and a singer. The songs are not detachable performances placed between plot scenes. They carry Ellian’s information, memories, demands, and shifting feelings. Zegler’s voice has to keep the same person recognizable from an energetic opening number to a reflective passage, then into the anger of “What About Me?”
A voice performance tied to animation
Jenson framed Spellbound as a fairy tale used to tell a family story. The film has a kingdom, a princess, a king, a queen, and a spell, yet its conflict concerns alienation and change inside a family. Zegler also said the film addresses delicate subjects through imagery, music, and an allegorical approach to issues children can face.
Ellian’s vocal role sits inside that design. Her speaking scenes carry the immediate action: hiding the secret, dealing with the ministers, and pursuing a way to break the spell. Her songs make room for feelings the plot cannot reduce to a quick explanation. Menken and Slater’s writing, combined with Zegler’s booth performance and the animators’ later work, makes Ellian’s internal life audible.
For a related look at how animated productions divide speaking and singing roles, read Mira’s speaking and singing voices in KPop Demon Hunters.
The clearest answer is also the simplest. Rachel Zegler voices Princess Ellian and sings her songs in Spellbound. Her early scratch work contributed portions of “What About Me?,” and the finished performance was shaped around a character whose songs move from duty and memory to anger and change.
What does “What About Me?” reveal about Ellian that her dialogue cannot say? How does the animation change the way you hear Zegler’s booth performance?
