Hailee Steinfeld on Recording Music for New Movie ‘Hexed’ and Becoming a Mother in the Process

Hailee Steinfeld is pulling double duty on new Disney animated movie Hexed, both leading the voice cast and recording music for the soundtrack.

The film sees Steinfeld voicing a teen who discovers she has secret magical powers, which lead her into Hexe, a realm of witches. She is joined on the journey by her cautious mother (voiced by Rashida Jones) and faces off against evil ruler Queen Celeste (Jodie Foster). To go along with the witchy theme, Steinfeld recorded a cover of The Cars’ 1984 song “Magic” for the film.

“Any time I get the chance to get in the studio it’s an easy yes from me. It’s such a love of mine, it’s such a passion, and this is I want to say the fourth project, the fourth time in my career that I’ve had the chance to both act in something and have a musical component, which is very special,” Steinfeld told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s L.A. premiere on Thursday.

Walt Disney Animation chief creative officer Jared Bush first texted her with the idea, and “I was immediately yes in all caps with a bunch of exclamation points; I got more information and of course it was like, ‘The deadline was yesterday.’ So I called on my childhood best friend, Demitri Lerios, who is a phenomenal talent. He found his way to Buffalo, New York to meet me and record this song in 24 hours. We had the best time; it was really awesome.”

After co-starring in Sinners last year, Steinfeld has been away from the spotlight recently as she welcomed a daughter with husband Josh Allen in the spring. The star said she was drawn to the film because “I am so lucky to have the most amazing mother. I’ve never really played through a mother-daughter dynamic like this before. This also came into my life at a time when I maybe didn’t know I necessarily needed it as much as I did. I became a mother while making this film, and I gained so much perspective on life and the evolution of life and on the mother-daughter dynamic.”

“I have so much empathy and patience and respect and admiration for it,” she continued. “It’s very complex and it’s very fragile, and I am learning so much every single minute of the day. I hope that people see this movie and walk away and call their moms and tell them they love them.”

Foster is returning to the animated world for the first time since she worked on cartoons as a child actor, and cites The Lion King as her favorite movie. “The idea to play a Disney villain was just super exciting, I definitely couldn’t turn away from it. This one was so grounded and so psychologically complicated in its subtlety,” Foster explained. “Also the world of witches — witches need to be reanimated. Instead of vilified they need to be seen for being all-female societies that give women the power they’re due.”

Jones was also drawn in by her love of witches and said working on an animated project like this is “so great to see it come together because there is a real leap of faith. You’re in there and you’re being told the context of the scene and you hope that you get it … then you see it come together and you’re like that’s so cool that somebody had that in their brain and then they made it happen with all these little components and with different artists.”