The creators of Toy Story 5 reveal the secrets behind the latest entry in the hit Pixar franchise

It was more than 30 years ago, way back in 1995, that Pixar first introduced the world to Woody the cowboy, planet-hopping Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the toys belonging to a kid named Andy. Since then fans of the Toy Story franchise have continued to show up for sequels, raking in a combined US$3.5 billion (and counting) at the box office.

With the recent release of Toy Story 5, Woody (voiced as always by Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) face a new threat in Lilypad (The Morning Show’s Greta Lee), a smart tablet that threatens to make the old-school toys obsolete.

Toy Story 5 is co-directed and written by McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton, with the latter having served as a Toy Story writer since the first film. According to Harris, Stanton’s first draft for Toy Story 5 “already had Lilypad kind of envisioned as an antagonist. He wanted Jessie to be running the room now that she had had the sheriff badge passed to her. And then he really wanted to see 50 Buzzes going rogue in the film and washing ashore in the beginning on a beach, which all of us were like, ‘Tell us again about that. What do you mean by that?’ And he was like, ‘Just go with it. Just go with it.’ But the first draft, just those concepts alone felt so exciting and strong, especially for a lot of us. We were like, oh my gosh, Jessie being the protagonist feels like a no-brainer. And the rest is history.”

Harris has had a lifelong connection with Toy Story; a fan since childhood, Toy Story 2 — which introduced Jessie — was the first film Harris saw a film in a theatre. “And so I’ve always loved Jessie, and I’ve always been a drawer. So I would draw her constantly,” Harris recalled. “And so when Andrew first kind of asked if I wanted to join as co-director, there was like the briefest moment of like, ‘Ooh, that’s intimidating.’ He’s only, like, the guy of my childhood who wrote all these stories. And then I went, ‘Wait, is he asking me to write Jessie fan fiction with him? Then I’m the perfect choice!’ And so I immediately kind of fell into it with a lot of joy.”

Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter — who directed the first film in the franchise — explains that the creation of a Toy Story movie is a lengthy and constantly evolving methodology. “We have a process that allows us to get it wrong many, many times,” says Docter. “And so we take our first pass. In fact, I think Andrew is pretty blatantly like, ‘I’m not worried about the other characters.’ I know I remember him saying this in one of the first or second screenings, like, ‘These other characters have to be balanced. I’m just focused on the through-line of the main character. We can get to all that.’ So it really — the old adage that writing is rewriting is definitely right on in our case.”

In fact, the sheer number of characters in the franchise that needed to be serviced, while introducing new ones and focusing on the main storyline, presented an ongoing obstacle for the filmmakers. “Practically each day, it still just ended up being a challenge,” admits Harris. “And I feel like the ways we accomplished it really varied. Like, sometimes it was a roll of the dice of like, ‘All right, who hasn’t spoken in five minutes? Let’s give Dolly a line.’ And so there was kind of truly, at times, a mad scramble. But also just this organic realization of what characters are really thriving and suddenly, you know, Smarty Pants isn’t something that we’re trying to pitch and, like, convince others that they want to see him onscreen. It’s like, no, he’s stealing scenes. We want to see more from him. And so, yes, we do need to sacrifice. We do need to see less of certain characters that we love. But we have a newfound confidence that our audience is really going to enjoy these new characters that we’re making room for. But, yeah, it was never easy. It’s a lot of mouths to feed when it comes to characters in a Toy Story production.”

When it came to casting the aforementioned Smarty Pants — a toy designed to help kids with potty training — producer Lindsey Collins credits Harris with the “ephipany” of enlisting a former late-night host as the new character’s voice. “Kenna, I will absolutely credit for kind of coming up with Conan O’Brien for Smarty Pants,” Collins says. “That was all Kenna being like, ‘Wait a minute. I have the perfect choice.’”

Of course, Collins also admits there’s very little arm-twisting required when seeking out A-list talent to join the franchise. “Being part of Toy Story actually is a thing that people are excited about,” she says.

Digital animation has become significantly more sophisticated since 1995, and while Toy Story 5 may be more impressive than its predecessors on that front, Docter sees that as an enhancement, not the main attraction. “The animators now have so much polish. I mean, they’re so good,” he says. “If you go back and look at the animation in Toy Story 1, it’s sort of like clunky and lacks weight. But the performance is the same. I think that’s the consistent thing that we’re always focused on . . . The technology is going to wow you for about three seconds. After that, it’s got to bring it in terms of what it’s saying. It’s got to have some emotional thing and a connection that the audience recognizes as real in the performance. That’s what I think the animators at Pixar are second to nobody in their ability to just dive into a character and make them feel alive.”

While the technology may have evolved over the course of three decades and five films, Docter is insistent that the underlying philosophy that made the first film so successful remain in place. “From the beginning, we know our job is to entertain people,” he says. “We’re not just doing this to work out our own inner demons or, you know, have fun for ourselves. We want to make sure that everybody is engaged, involved and looking for those things that we really think will speak widely to everybody.”

Toy Story 5, in theatres