Peyton Elizabeth Lee leaned into a little nostalgia this week. The “Andi Mack” lead posted a TikTok reuniting with Lilan Bowden and Lauren Tom, her onscreen mother and grandmother from the Disney Channel series, with the three of them lip-syncing audio from the show’s first episode. The clip cues up on Andi’s “You’re my what???,” the moment she learns the woman she thought was her sister is actually her mother, with Lee, Bowden, and Tom each mouthing their original lines. It plays on a series that wrapped almost seven years ago, and it lands while Lee is in the busiest stretch of her post-Disney career.
For anyone who missed it the first time, that reveal was the engine of the whole show. “Andi Mack” came from Terri Minsky, who created “Lizzie McGuire,” and premiered on Disney Channel on April 7, 2017. It followed 13-year-old Andi, played by Lee, whose world tilts when her older sister Bex, played by Bowden, turns out to be her biological mother, with Tom playing her grandmother Celia. The coming-of-age series ran three seasons and 57 episodes before ending July 26, 2019, and it drew attention as the first Disney Channel show to center a main character’s coming-out story.
The reunion is a throwback. The news is what comes next. Lee, 22, makes her theatrical debut this fall in “Wildwood,” the stop-motion fantasy from Laika that opens nationwide October 23. Variety and Deadline both reported in January that Laika partnered with Fathom Entertainment for U.S. distribution and FilmNation Entertainment for international sales, confirming the October 23 date. Lee voices Prue McKeel, a seventh grader who chases her kidnapped baby brother into a hidden, dangerous forest near Portland. Jacob Tremblay voices her classmate Curtis. The film is directed by Travis Knight, who also runs Laika, from a script by Chris Butler based on Colin Meloy’s novel.
The voice cast is deep. Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Waits, and Richard E. Grant all lend voices. “Wildwood is the biggest world Laika has ever built, and the most personal,” Knight said in the statement announcing the release date. The project has been in development since 2011, the year Meloy’s book came out.
That’s the confirmed centerpiece, but it isn’t the only thing on Lee’s plate. “Pizza Movie,” the American High comedy that premiered at SXSW in March, held the No. 1 spot for a week on both Hulu and Disney+, according to Deadline. The outlet reported May 7 that American High is reuniting with Lee on “Second First Date,” a new comedy written by Matt Sacca. She also turned up at SXSW for the premiere of “Brian,” a coming-of-age comedy she joined alongside “Dead Boy Detectives” actor Joshua Colley.
Then there’s the rumor that won’t quite go away. Since January, several Power Rangers trade-trackers, including The Legacy of Nerd and TheDisInsider, have reported that Lee is in talks to lead Disney’s long-gestating “Power Rangers” reboot for Disney+ as the Red Ranger. Disney has not confirmed any casting, and the showrunners, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” duo Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz, have kept the project under wraps. Treat it as unverified until the studio says otherwise.
For now, the dated, checkable fact is “Wildwood.” It opens in theaters October 23, with international territories to follow.
