Anthony Pyatt grew up in the shadow of Walt Disney World, and now the actor has found a hot role in Disney’s hit “Descendants” movie franchise.
Pyatt, who graduated from Lake Howell High in Winter Park, is playing a young version of Hades — the flaming blue-haired baddie from Disney’s “Hercules” — in “Descendants: The Rise of Red.” The fourth movie in the series focused on the teen offspring of Disney villains. It debuts on July 12 on the Disney+ streaming service and on cable’s Disney Channel in August.
“My whole life feels like it’s taken a new direction,” says Pyatt, who’s looking forward to attending the Hollywood premiere with his girlfriend and two besties. There, he’ll reunite with co-stars he hasn’t seen since filming wrapped in March 2023.
Although he has other TV appearances under his belt, including an episode of ABC’s “Will Trent,” this role feels like a big break. It’s certainly his highest-profile project.
“I’ve always had a passion for TV and film since I was a kid,” says Pyatt, whose professional training includes classes at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City and ClassAct Studios in Orlando.
He is keenly aware that success follows its own schedule.
“It can feel so out of reach,” he says. “It’s never going to happen in the time you want it to.”
He hopes the “Rise of Red” role will give his career new momentum — and there already are signs of that: He just booked another TV show appearance that will begin filming in a few months.
Pyatt finds he’s happy experiencing a variety of roles.
“I’m so much more interested in being a working actor rather than being famous,” he says.
But, interestingly, his latest goal has him eyeing the stage.
“My pie-in-the-sky dream is to be in any of the productions of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,'” he says. He finds the combination of storytelling and stagecraft, with the live magic on stage, irresistible.
“Oh, this is what I’m working for,” he recalls thinking when he first saw the show, a Tony Award winner for best play. And although movie special effects can impress, live stage effects thrill.
“That hit me different,” he says of the “Harry Potter” magic. “That sent chills down my spine.”
The interest in theater won’t come as a surprise to Central Floridians who remember Pyatt in notable roles at the Orlando Fringe Festival, Mad Cow Theatre, the Garden Theatre, Beth Marshall Presents’ Play-in-a-Day and Orlando Family Stage (then called Orlando Repertory Theatre), among others.
He played everything from the tortured and torturing hellion at the center of “A Clockwork Orange” to the reminiscing narrator of “The Glass Menagerie.”
Pyatt was twice honored in the Orlando Sentinel’s annual Critic’s Picks, celebrating the best theatrical work of the year. In 2017, he won best leading actor in a musical for Orlando Rep’s “Newsies,” in which he was described as “captivating as all get-out” as idealistic newsboy Jack. Then, in 2019, he was awarded best leading actor in a comedy for playing both a meek teenager and the satanic puppet who takes charge of him in Mad Cow Theatre’s “Hand to God.”
In my review at the time, I wrote that Pyatt “boils with intensity.”
That doesn’t surprise him.
“I was sort of pegged as the ‘intense guy,'” he says. “If you needed a young guy who can be brooding or scream or cry, I was your dude.”
Like many an Orlando native, Pyatt found work in theme parks and attractions. He did a stint at Capone’s Dinner & Show in Kissimmee, and has played multiple roles at Universal Orlando, where you still might catch him.
Perhaps surprisingly, considering his “Descendants” role, he never worked at Walt Disney World — though he remembers visiting “maybe once a year or every other year, like for my birthday.”
“Disney played a big part in my upbringing,” he says, especially when it was time for family movie nights with features ranging from classics like “The Aristocats” to the newer Pixar films.
“We’d order a pizza and watch the movies at home,” Pyatt says. “‘Wall-E’ was big in my household.”
He remembers “Hercules” as “a sweet memory of childhood, and now it’s relevant again.”
The animated version of his live-action role wowed him on first viewing.
“I had never seen a bad guy like Hades,” he recalls. “[Hades voice actor] James Woods was so cheeky.”
The movie also affected his musical taste, giving him a new interest in gospel and R&B.
“I gravitated to that kind of music after that movie,” he says. “When the Muses started singing ‘The Gospel Truth,’ it woke something up in me.”
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His journey to “Descendants: The Rise of Red” began in Orlando, first with online video auditions from home and then, once cast, with a wig fitting. A stylist came to his home and measured his head and hairline for the distinctive hairpiece.
“I remember the day I first had it on [on set], my co-stars were like, ‘Oh, he’s here. Hades has arrived,'” he recalls. “I felt cool.”
Then he laughs.
“I felt taller.”
The movie musical tells the story of Red, the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, who teams up with Cinderella’s daughter, Chloe. To right a past wrong to the Queen, the two travel back in time, where they meet younger versions of Disney villains such as Captain Hook, Maleficent and Pyatt’s Hades.
“You are going to see the cheeky, fiery bad boy that everyone wants Hades to be,” he says of his character.
The cast rehearsed for about a month — “We wanted those dance numbers to be nice and tight,” Pyatt says — and then filmed in Georgia for about two more months.
After living in New York City and Los Angeles at different times, the irony of finding his biggest screen role to date so close to home was not lost on him.
“If anyone had told me, ‘You’ll have your first big thing right out of Orlando, I’d have been like, ‘No way,'” he says.
He can see why the “Descendants” movies have proven not only entertaining with the singing and dancing, but also are enduring.
“There’s a lot of family and friendship and love,” he says of the stories. “The movies show that there’s heart and humanity even in those you don’t understand. … They really touch a lot of people. I’m so happy to be part of this.”
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more arts news at OrlandoSentinel.com/entertainment.
