What is Malia Baker's ethnicity? Descendants: The Rise of Red actress' nationality and heritage explored

Descendants: The Rise of Red, the fourth film in the popular Descendants series, was released on Disney+ on July 12, 2024. The film shows Red (daughter of Queen of Hearts) and Chloe Charming (daughter of Cinderella and Prince Charming) teaming up to prevent a catastrophe in Auradon.

Though the original cast of the series did not return for Descendants: The Rise of Red, the new cast members have drawn praise from the audience. Malia Baker's portrayal of Chloe Charming has impressed fans, who are now eager to know more about the actor.

Malia Baker is a seventeen-year-old actress born in Botswana, a country in Southern Africa, and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She made her acting debut in Hope at Christmas but was uncredited in this TV movie. The Descendants: The Rise of Red actress was recognized for her performance in The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix in 2020.

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The Descendants: The Rise of Red actress was born in Botswana and raised in Canada

Malia Baker was born in Botswana; her family later moved to Canada. Though not much information about her family is available on the internet, according to an interview with BET from July 12, 2024, Baker has a younger sister and a single mother.

Malia Baker’s journey went from playing an uncredited role in a TV movie to portraying one of the two main characters in a Disney film. In the same interview, the actress said that her mother gave her a ‘one-year deadline’ within which she had to land a big role, and only then could she continue acting. Baker explained:

“It’s because she's a single mom. I have a younger sister and we were both doing a ton of activities. The city was an hour away and that's where all the auditions were held.”

Soon, Baker would play Mary Anne Spier in season one of the 2020 Netflix series The Baby-Sitters Club. She reprised the role in the second season in 2021. A woman of color, Baker has praised Disney’s inclusion of people of color in the cast for Descendants: The Rise of Red. In a Teen Vogue interview from July 12, 2024, the actress said:

“Me and Kylie [are both women of color], and having that not even really be a conversation point during this press run is cool because it’s just so normalized.”

She continued:

“We get to talk about these Disney characters as if they’ve been [people of color] the entire time, which is really cool to be able to hand down and not have it be a big deal for the next generation.”

She was also seen in projects like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and the Lifetime TV movie Caught in His Web. Following these performances, she landed her role in Descendants: The Rise of Red.

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Descendants: The Rise of Red: Plot and cast

The plot revolves around Princess Red and Chloe and follows the events of Descendants: The Royal Wedding. Uma is now the headmistress of Auradon Prep and invites Princess Red to Auradon Prep.

Red is the daughter of Queen of Hearts, the whimsical and dictatorial ruler from Wonderland. The Queen hates Cinderella and Auradon and seeks to harm both. As the Queen of Hearts stages a coup against Auradon, Princess Red and Chloe (Cinderella and Prince Charming’s daughter) team up. They use a magical pocket watch to travel back in time and fix things.

The original cast of the first three films did not return for this one. China Anne McClain, one of the few actors from the previous films, returns as Uma. The new cast members include Kylie Cantrall, who plays Red, the daughter of Queen of Hearts (Rita Ora), and Malia Baker, who plays Chloe Charming, the daughter of Cinderella (Brandy Norwood) and Prince Charming (Paolo Montalban).