those qualities in Cinderella." Company alumna Veanne Cox and television actress Natalie Desselle, respectively, were cast as Cinderella's stepsisters. Cosmopolitan's Alexis Nedd wrote that the film's final cast consisted of "Broadway stars, recording artists, relative unknowns, and bona fide entertainment superstars." Due to the well-known cast, tabloid newspapers often fabricated stories of the cast engaging in physical altercations, particularly among Brandy, Houston and Goldberg, all of which were proven false. This version of Cinderella was the first live-action fairy tale featuring color-blind casting to be broadcast on television, boasting one of the most diverse ensemble casts to appear on television at the time. Music Freedman's final teleplay is 11 minutes longer than previous adaptations, in turn offering several opportunities for new songs, some of which the producers felt necessary. Disney asked the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to be as open about changes to the musical's score as they had been about the script and cast. Music producers Chris Montan and Arif Mardin were interested in combining "Broadway legit with Hollywood pop", re-arranging the musical's original orchestration in favor of achieving a more contemporary sound by updating its rhythm and beats. Montan, who oversees most of the music for Disney's animated films, had been interested in crossing over into live-action for several years and identified Cinderella as one of the first opportunities in which he was allowed to do so. The musicians were not interested in completely modernizing the material in the vein of the musical The Wiz (1974), opting to simply "freshen" its orchestration by incorporating contemporary rhythms, keyboards and instruments, similar to the way in which the studio approaches animated musicals. Although filmmakers are usually hesitant to interpolate songs from other sources into adaptations of Rodgers and Hammerstein's work, Ted Capin, President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, challenged the producers to conceive "compelling reasons" as to why they should incorporate new material into the remake, allowing the filmmakers significant freedom on the condition that the additions remain consistent with the project. Three songs not featured in previous versions of the musical were added to augment the film's score, each of which was borrowed from a different Rodgers and Hammerstein source; these additions are considered to be the most dramatic of the changes made to the musical. "The Sweetest Sounds", a duet Rodgers wrote himself following Hammerstein's death for the musical No Strings (1962), was used to explore the