Auliʻi Cravalho Reveals How Moana Was 'Allowed to Age' in the Disney Sequel: 'My Voice Has Changed' Since Age 15 (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

(Left-right:) Auliʻi Cravalho in 2016; in 2024.Photo:Amanda Edwards/WireImage; Kate Green/Getty

Amanda Edwards/WireImage; Kate Green/Getty

Both Moana and the actress playing her are growing up!

Auliʻi Cravalho, the star of Disney’s 2016 animated hitMoanaand itsnew sequel(in theaters Nov. 27), is “so grateful to come back” to her wayfinding chieftess, she tells PEOPLE. “This character is who started my whole career as a young performer.”

The Hawaii native, now 24, was 14 when she was selected out of hundreds of aspiring stars for the voice role and 15 when she recorded it. Returning for the long-awaitedMoana 2, Cravalho says, means that “I really get to have that full decade look back at just how much growth I’ve gone through.”

While the first movie was “focused on connecting with the past,” she continues,Moana 2“is about connecting to the future and all the things that could come.” And in her full-circle moment of returning to the character who launched her career, Cravalho — currentlystarring as Sally Bowlesin Broadway’sCabaret at the Kit Kat Cluband executive producing thelive-actionMoanaadaptation — is both looking back and ahead.

“It feels like Moana and I have been juxtaposed in our growth together, and that is amazing,” she says. The new movie marks one of the only times “in Disney history that a Disney princess has been allowed to age. And so my voice has changed from when I played her when I was 15, and now her voice is a little different. The songs that I’m singing also get to show off a different side of myself.”

Again starringDwayne Johnsonas rascally demigod Maui,Moana 2also brings back voice actors Temuera Morrison,Nicole Scherzinger, Rachel House andAlan Tudyk— an authentically Polynesian community Cravalho calls her “Moana ohana,” or family. “We had started off thinking that this would be an animated series [that] would go to Disney+,” she recalls. “And after watching a lot of the footage back and recordings had started, we realized, ‘This deserves to be played in a theater.’”

Auli’i Cravalho in 2023; ‘Moana 2’.Kevin Winter/Getty; Disney

Kevin Winter/Getty; Disney

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After her whirlwind introduction to Hollywood and sharing Moana around the world, what has the beloved character taught her? “From the first film I took that you can be the hero of your own story,” she says. An even better takeaway for young Disney fans: “You do not need a love interest to also complete your arc.”

And because they’re a “celebration” of her Hawaiian heritage and real-life Polynesian history, the films will always hold a special place in Cravalho’s heart. The world ofMoanaand its ever-expanding horizons “really tap into the incredible knowledge that we have as an indigenous culture.”

Moana 2is in theaters Nov. 27.

source: people.com