Netflix casts Ali Wong, Stephanie Hsu in stepsisters' Cinderella twist

Netflix has turned Bette Midler’s Fairy Godmother into the latest signal that Hollywood’s fairy-tale playbook is shifting toward familiar stories told from the margins. In Steps, the streamer’s animated feature due in 2026, Ali Wong voices Lilith, Stephanie Hsu voices Margot, Amanda Seyfried plays Cinderella, and Midler joins as a Fairy Godmother who is well intentioned, but a bit of a bumbler and schemer.

The cast reveal came as Netflix widened the scope of the project it first announced in December 2020 as a musical animated comedy. That earlier version, from Paper Kite Productions, was built around two overlooked stepsisters on an epic journey, with story and music by Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci. The new version keeps the familiar markers of Cinderella intact, including the royal ball, the lost glass slipper and the midnight deadline, but the studio has moved the point of view decisively to the so-called evil stepsisters.

Netflix says Steps is directed by Alyce Tzue and John Ripa and produced by Amy Poehler, Jane Hartwell and Kim Lessing, with Poehler and Lessing producing for Paper Kite Productions. The company has also said Tzue drew on her own experience growing up as an outsider, a detail that gives the film a sharper emotional frame than a simple reversal of the old story. The movie is built around belonging as much as spectacle, with sibling rivalry and the sense that happily-ever-after was written for someone else.

The synopsis goes further. Lilith steals the Fairy Godmother’s magic wand, hijacks the Royal Ball with her sister and accidentally turns Margot into a frog. The kingdom falls under the control of Priscilla, a prince-obsessed mean girl, and Lilith is forced into an adventure with Cinderella to fight biker trolls, outrun henchmen and escape the Screaming Woods while trying to repair the sisters’ relationship.

That mix of irony, action and self-aware revision fits a broader industry strategy. Streamers keep returning to well-known IP because recognition lowers the risk, but the current twist is to rebuild the story around characters once treated as supporting players or villains. Steps makes that calculation openly, betting that audiences will still respond when the old fairy tale is rewritten from the outside in.

Netflix will stage a work-in-progress session for Steps on June 23 at Annecy, where Tzue, Ripa, art director Dan Casey and head of character animation Jason Figliozzi are slated to discuss the reimagining. For Netflix, the film is another star-driven animated title in a slate that keeps testing whether a classic story becomes newly marketable when the spotlight lands on the characters who used to stand in the shadows.