Disney Channel Stars Will Friedle and Sabrina Bryan Are Taking Us on a ‘Magical Rewind’

We’ve reached a new era in Disney Channel nostalgia: Disney Channel celebs have started making their own Disney Channel rewatch podcasts. In Magical Rewind, former Disney Channel stars Will Friedle (Boy Meets World, Kim Possible) and Sabrina Bryan (The Cheetah Girls franchise) dive into Disney’s vast catalog of made-for-TV films, including Disney Channel Original Movies and those produced for ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney. The co-hosts wear matching jammies and smile from theater seats in a promotional photo with popcorn ready to go, signaling that they have a cozy, nostalgic treat for their fans.

Since the show began in mid-January, Bryan and Friedle present new recaps every week, balancing critical takes with nostalgia and appreciation for decades of Disney magic. They have a motto nodding to the DCOM canon: “Welcome back to Magical Rewind, the show that makes you want to grab your friends, your PJs, and your popcorn, and go back to a time when all the houses were smart, the waves tsunamis, and the high schools musical.” The duo’s weekly walkthroughs cover plots, characters, filming locations, trivia, and, of course, their genuine ratings and reactions. Bryan’s hope is that avid DCOM fans will watch the movies she and Friedle discuss, perhaps joining them in rewatch parties down the line.

The pair is well-suited for this kind of podcast venture, with each boasting a rich history with Disney. Bryan has been a Disney Channel delight since her first outing as Dorinda Thomas in The Cheetah Girls. The 2003 film was only the beginning of her DCOM fame, as the Cheetahs filmed two sequels, recorded numerous Disney music projects, and became a real, touring girl group. Bryan, who’s since become a Dancing with the Stars favorite, is also a professional dance coach and choreographer.

Friedle was a Nickelodeon star in the ’80s, rapping and interviewing “Weird” Al Yankovic on kids’ talk show Don’t Just Sit There. But he is best known to an entire Disney Channel generation as Eric Matthews from Boy Meets World (reruns of the ABC TGIF sitcom aired on Disney) and the voice of Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible, which premiered in 2002. As a seasoned podcaster, Friedle has co-hosted I Hear Voices with Christy Carlson Romano (Even Stevens, Kim Possible, Cadet Kelly), and he’s currently recapping the fourth season of Boy Meets World with fellow co-stars Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong on Pod Meets World.

With so many credits on the same network, it’s surprising that Friedle and Bryan didn’t know each other before working on the show. “I actually got a call from iHeart and Will,” Bryan says, in an interview with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “They are the ones that reached out to me with this idea, and growing up literally on Disney, that is what I watched all the time.”

But she and Friedle have quickly developed an easy rapport. “Will is like a giant book of knowledge when it comes to all classic films,” Bryan says. “We got along very well right away,” Friedle adds. “And the thing we liked about the whole idea was the fact that for some of the DCOMs we were watching, they were going to be nostalgic for her. For other ones that are a little older, they're going to be nostalgic for me.”

Now’s a great time for the co-hosts to revisit their old stomping grounds. Disney TV movies still tend to make waves, both great and small, in pop culture. In a 2023 Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance, Succession’s Nicholas Braun discussed the time when he handed Quentin Tarantino a Tiger Beat ad for his 2008 DCOM, Minutemen. Keke Palmer paid homage to Tyra Banks’ Life-Size performance by brilliantly recreating the mall try-on montage. Fans who travel to Barcelona even film themselves doing the Cheetah Girls 2 “Strut” number.

“Even though we can kind of bounce back and forth with some of [the movies] and the messaging maybe not always hitting right-on… the main messages are always so inspirational and they’re so warm-hearted,” Bryan says. Friedle calls the DCOM “the film equivalent of a warm blanket” or slippers. “You’re four, you like a warm blanket. You’re 40, you like a warm blanket. That’s never going to change,” he says.

Magical Rewind starts with familiar territory for Friedle in particular: My Date with the President’s Daughter, in which he starred. This beloved Wonderful World of Disney film and its eponymous theme song aren’t streaming legally, to the dismay of anyone who has ever fangirled over Hallie’s (Elisabeth Harnois) pink velvet dress. Though it’s not a DCOM, the 1998 movie speaks to the DCOM generation, much like 2000’s Model Behavior and Life-Size always have. These Wonderful World of Disney films would rerun on Disney Channel, melding with the spectacle of tween entertainment in bloom during that time.

Bryan and Friedle blend criticism with behind-the-scenes details that only an actor from the film could reveal. Friedle tells a story of meeting Dave Chappelle, who was working near the Toronto set and used Friedle’s bathroom at 3 a.m. “It was one of the strangest Hollywood moments I’ve ever had in my life,” he says on the pod, laughing.

The second recap is all about the first Cheetah Girls film, giving Bryan the floor for “Cheetah-licious” stories between scene analysis. She shares what it was like to receive flowers and a note from one of the film’s executive producers, Whitney Houston. It’s especially cute to listen to Friedle embrace the movie’s “Cheetah chatter,” including its “jiggy jungle” and nicknames like “Chuchie” and “Bubbles.”

These weekly recaps are supplemented by “Park Hopper” episodes, where Friedle and Bryan interview stars from the movies they cover. The first three guests are Elisabeth Harnois (who co-starred with Friedle in My Date with the President’s Daughter), Kiely Williams (Bryan’s fellow Cheetah Girl), and Christina Vidal (from Brink!); the episode featuring Williams—who was in the girl group 3LW before Cheetah Girls—is a highlight. Bryan and Williams fondly remember the late Stephen “tWitch” Boss, who attended Chapman University with Bryan and choreographed the group’s first live performance: their Disneymania 3 rendition of “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love).” They even entertain the idea of a full Cheetah reunion—although millennials might not be able to handle that much nostalgia. Magical Rewind, however, is the next best thing.

Bryan counts herself among those fans who still reminisce about the good old days of watching tween TV. She was a Disney Channel fan from a young age, as her family subscribed back when it was a premium cable channel in the ’80s and ’90s. She recalls watching The All New Mickey Mouse Club and Kids Incorporated, and being drawn to the music and movement before she’d even started dance lessons. “I definitely danced in the living room, just following along, the way kids do. Seeing it on the TV, rewinding it, trying to mimic the moves, finding such awesome music that was on Kids Incorporated,” she says. It made perfect sense that Bryan went on to make Disney music herself.

While he didn’t grow up watching DCOMs the way Bryan did—she noted a particular love for 1998’s Brink! and 1999’s Johnny Tsunami—Friedle compares the experience of critiquing them alongside her to revisiting ’80s movies he loved, like BMX Bandits and Rad. Without the nostalgia factor, people seeing those particular films for the first time might not get the appeal.

“But, because they were so important to my childhood, they’re hugely important and the best movies ever,” Friedle says, adding that “you can’t just watch [DCOMs] like they’re standalone movies. You have to watch them as if you're a kid experiencing them for the first time.” That said, he is still getting the hang of approaching the films from a childlike viewpoint, while Bryan, he says, “can just slip right back into being the 13-year-old with her friends watching these movies.”

Now a mom of two, Bryan has swapped out her friends to include her family in the watch (or rewatch) process instead. Other millennial parents are doing the same thing, she’s observed—and while theirs is the generation driving Disney Channel nostalgia, they’re spreading the love to their kids, too.

“I know as the Cheetah Girls have gone on, our fanbase seems to be multi-generational,” Bryan says. “So the girls that started back when we came out that now have daughters of their own, kids of their own, that love the messaging and are having them watch.”

The classic DCOM has a certain timeless appeal, as Friedle has learned while working on the podcast. “We’ve watched a couple where it’s like, ‘OK, forget the nostalgia. Forget Disney Channel. That’s just a good movie.’ And there’s some where you’ve got to kind of go, ‘OK, it is what it is.’ But you’re there. You’re rooting for them. You’re enjoying what’s going on.”

While millennial fans checking out the show might come for DCOMs from their childhoods, Magical Rewind will introduce them to a much deeper Disney TV movie catalog, too. Friedle and Bryan have a fascination with Disney Channel Premiere Films of the ’80s and ’90s and want to take the Wonderful World of Disney brand as far back in time as possible (and its predecessors, as the TV anthology started in Walt Disney’s era and had some other monikers). Kurt Russell and Steve Guttenberg, who starred in Willie and the Yank (1967) and Tower of Terror (1997), are both invited to come on the pod and chat about their own Disney TV projects.

But the obstacle Magical Rewind faces is the Disney Channel history buff’s lament: Not everything is on streaming. “Hopefully these movies are not lost to the ether,” Friedle says. “These are wonderful time capsules of filmmaking, of Disney, of storytelling, that shouldn’t be lost.” Tiger Town, Disney Channel’s first movie, is at the top of the list.

Still, Bryan and Friedle have fun jumping around the timeline of Disney Channel movie releases, even going past millennial favorites to tackle more recent DCOM fare. Both co-hosts say they were captivated by 2015’s Descendants—the subject of the show’s most recent episode—and look forward to the rest of the Kenny Ortega-directed trilogy, which went on to become a huge hit for Disney Channel; it’s sort of a High School Musical-esque experience for the next generation.

However, Disney has not used the Disney Channel Original Movie branding for a new film since fall 2022, for a sequel to the 2021 Under Wraps reboot. “Disney Original Movie” is the parlance for recent and upcoming projects (as with the 2023 film Prom Pact, rated TV-14). While it’s sad to accept that this could be the end of an era, it’s also not too surprising that Disney would move toward more fluid packaging. They still feature talent from Disney Channel in some of their new movies, which might premiere on the channel and then become available on Disney+ the next day.

Friedle finds that, while the “Disney magic” hasn’t dimmed, the “camaraderie” around viewership has. “It's not on April 7 at 8:30 on Friday night—it's on whenever you want it to be on, which changes the entire feeling surrounding the magic.” Magical Rewind, then, fits a niche of listeners who still like making DCOMs a continual part of their lives. “The rewatch podcast is, in a very small way, hopefully bringing back that monoculture, which I miss, frankly,” Friedle says.

Bryan likens the experience to a trip to Disneyland: The day, like the podcast, is about “nostalgia of your childhood, seeing what's new in the park, but you always love going on Dumbo, and those rides that are just classics.”