Adrienne Bailon

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The Cheetah Girls, a phenomenally popular trio of teen singing stars, are in the middle of shooting their latest movie in India for the Disney Channel. Filming “The Cheetah Girls: One World” for eight weeks on location in Udaipur and Mumbai has been a challenging but exciting experience for the girls, who say they’ve become big fans of India’s music and food.

“They told us before we left, ‘Girls, it’s kind of scary,’ but I love it! We’ve had a blast,” Kiely Williams told India-West on a recent phone call from Udaipur. “Bombay is so packed and busy — our car ran into an autorickshaw and I freaked out. ‘No problem,’ said the driver!” she giggled.

“We love everything about India, and we’ve been immersing ourselves in the culture. I love kathi rolls — I call them Indian burritos.”

In the new TV movie, which will air in the United States in August and around the world in the fall, the girls encounter rejection from New York City music producers and finally land their big break with an offer to star in what they think is a Hollywood production but turns out to be a Bollywood movie produced in India.

Aqua (Williams), Chanel (Adrienne Bailon), and Dorinda (Sabrina Bryan) are eager to go, but everything changes when they arrive in India and discover the films’ shrewd producer only wants one Cheetah Girl to star in the movie. “Cheetah Girls: One World” is directed by Paul Hoen and also stars acclaimed actor Roshan Seth and Deepti Daryanani, a young Kolkata-born actress who starred in HBO’s “The Anatomy of Hope.”

The three Cheetah Girls, talented dancers as well as singers and actresses, have found new respect for Bollywood’s high-endurance performers, they said.

Adrienne Bailon said the film would have three or four large-scale dance numbers, including a massive and colorful piece shot at Udaipur’s Lake Palace. “I’ll be in pink,” she noted.

Williams, whose strength is hip-hop dance, says learning the new Indian style has been an eye-opener. “Hip-hop is a very introverted style, very rough and tough,” said Williams. “But the Indian dance is very feminine. The women are so graceful, so well put-together.”

Sabrina Bryan said that she had fallen in love with Udaipur’s architecture, dance, music and colors. But “being away from home has not been easy,” she said. “Communicating, with the time difference, is hard. It’s night here, and morning in the States,” she told India-West with a yawn.

The girls have not yet met any Bollywood stars, but they hoped to, they said. “What’s his name — Shah Rukh Khan? — we see his face everywhere,” said Williams. “We are trying to get him in the film!”

The group’s target audience is “tweens,” 7-to-13-year-old girls, who are now considered one of America’s hottest demographics (the Washington Post reports that America’s tweens and their parents spend between $38 billion and $59 billion a year). The Cheetah Girls are hot stuff to this crowd — their last TV movie netted 30 million viewers, and ticket sales for their last 86-concert tour earned $86 million plus an additional $10 million in concert merchandise.

Bryan feels the movie will present a unique opportunity for these girls to understand and appreciate a culture that they know nothing about. “We’ve really been able to take the Cheetahs to a new level, with this Bollywood aspect,” she told India-West. “India is something a lot of our viewers have not experienced.”