Hexed Sends a Teen and Her Overprotective Mom Into a World of Witches
Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones voice a daughter discovering her magic and the mother who kept it hidden in Disney Animation’s Hexed.
The short answer: Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones voice a daughter discovering her magic and the mother who kept it hidden in Disney Animation’s Hexed.
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Alice has kept her daughter’s magical abilities suppressed since childhood. When 16-year-old Billie discovers those powers and is swept into a world of witches, her mother follows her there. That is the conflict driving Disney Animation’s Hexed: escaping the rules does not mean escaping the person who made them.
Hailee Steinfeld voices Billie Doe, an impulsive teenager who cannot understand her mother’s protectiveness. Rashida Jones plays Alice, whose decisions become part of the mystery they must unravel in the magical realm of Hexe. Their journey exposes buried family secrets with consequences for the world of witches—and gives each a chance to understand the other.
Taking Billie’s side, without losing Alice
The filmmakers did not immediately settle on whose perspective should lead. Director Fawn Veerasunthorn said that, as parents, she and fellow director Jason Hand often found themselves siding with Alice. Choosing Billie meant reaching back to their own teenage experiences rather than letting the mother’s concerns determine the story.
That tension has practical roots. In an interview with Laughing Place published October 12, 2026, Veerasunthorn recalled weighing her 10-year-old daughter’s wish to walk to school alone. Hand described his fear of handing his son the car keys to drive alone once he gets his license, recalling his own teenage driving. Both examples put a familiar dilemma behind Alice’s restrictions: giving a child more freedom means accepting that a parent cannot control everything.
Co-writer Dana Ledoux Miller brought another angle. She told Laughing Place that she remembered feeling out of place in the close-knit community she grew up in, while becoming a mother helped her understand the urge to protect. Her description makes the relationship more complicated than a rebellious child confronting an unreasonable adult.
They love each other so much, but they don't realize that they're kind of holding each other back from becoming the best versions of themselves. Dana Ledoux Miller, speaking to Laughing Place
Co-writer Jared Bush hopes parents will recognize both their relationships with their children and their own memories of being young. He called the bond between Alice and Billie “our North Star,” explaining that digging into their communication problems helped the team develop their dynamic.
Bush and Ledoux Miller previously teamed up on the live-action Moana. In the Laughing Place interview, Bush described animation writing as collaborative and iterative, while Ledoux Miller explained how their trust allows each to challenge the other’s dialogue. For Hexed, that process meant working toward a relationship that felt believable, not just a plot that fit together.
Magic that belongs to its maker
Hexe’s magic gives that struggle over potential a physical form. Developed with influences from nature, it comes from within each witch or wizard. Hand said the team gave individual characters distinct magical colors and expressions, making personality part of how a spell appears.
The effects are meant to feel tangible, too. Hand described sparks bursting from Billie’s hands, landing on a desk and fizzling out. Veerasunthorn connects those abilities to personal potential: what matters is how someone chooses to use what is inside them. Billie learns the rules alongside the audience, bringing expectations about witches from the contemporary human world that Hexe can overturn.
Even the framing connects to her predicament. Speaking to Slashfilm, Hand described the centered compositions early in the film as a deliberate way to suggest Billie is boxed in. He said the visual approach changes when she reaches Hexe, linking her move into the witch realm to a release from those constraints.
A queen with something to lose
Billie’s discovery also puts her in Queen Celeste’s sights. Voiced by Jodie Foster, Celeste sees the teenager as a possible key to preserving her rule over Hexe. Hand describes Celeste as the only other flying witch in that world—a distinction that turns Billie’s emerging ability into both competition and a target.
Help comes less ceremoniously. Walton Goggins voices Beef Roger Crummchuk, a reclusive, three-eyed cat who reluctantly allies with Billie and Alice. Bucket, an enchanted cauldron who does not speak, becomes Billie’s loyal companion. At Hexe’s entrance, she also meets Quill, a feather pen voiced by Tracey Ullman, and Quire, a magical journal voiced by Stephen Fry.
Those enchanted objects prompted producer Roy Conli to remark, “It’s like being in Beauty and the Beast again.” He described such touches as brief pleasures for viewers before the story moves on. The comparison is his nod to Disney’s past, while Billie and Alice’s relationship remains this adventure’s focus.
Hexed is directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn and Jason Hand, co-directed by Josie Trinidad, and written by Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller, with Roy Conli and Yvett Merino producing. It is scheduled to open exclusively in theaters on November 25, 2026, though the announcement does not specify which territories that date covers.