Interview: Tony Hale, Shelby Rabara, and More on Bringing "Toy Story 5" Home, From Pixar Visits to a Flub That Stuck
The toys are coming home with Toy Story 5’s in-home release. Now available for purchase from digital retailers, coming to 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on September 22nd, and streaming on Disney+ on September 23rd, one of the hottest films of the year is yours to watch over and over again. To mark the occasion, I spoke with four members of the film's voice cast: Tony Hale (Forky), Shelby Rabara (Snappy), Scarlett Spears (Bonnie), and Mykal-Michelle Harris (Blaze) about the film’s themes, favorite memories from the recording booth, and what they’re most excited for fans to see with the home release.
Old Toys, New Tech, and What This Generation Makes of It All
Toy Story 5 pits Jessie and the rest of Bonnie's toys against Lilypad, a tablet with her own ideas about what's best for their kid, and each member of the cast brought a different generational lens to that premise.
Shelby Rabara, who plays the vintage digital camera Snappy, has lived through the shift firsthand. "My first cell phone had a blue screen on it, and it was all digitized. It didn't even have colors,” she said. "At that time, in the early 2000s, it was so cool." Having seen cell phones evolve into mini supercomputers, Shelby considers herself more of a "vintage girl" who prefers books on real paper. "If I had a gramophone, I would totally use my gramophone," she joked, which made playing a character modeled after an old-school digital camera feel personal.
For Scarlett Spears and Mykal-Michelle Harris, who play Bonnie and Blaze, the toys-versus-tech divide isn't really a divide at all. "I think it's important to be able to have a blend of toys and tech," Harris said. "Toys foster such an amazing imagination... but it's also important to have technology, and technology connects a lot of us in this day and age." She pointed to her own reliance on GPS as an example: "My mom always tells me stories about having to open up a big map when she'd drive places. I'm gonna be so honest, I could not do that." Spears agreed, describing how the two blend in her own playtime: "Maybe if I'm playing with my toys, I can put a movie on my iPad, like my toys are watching a movie, and I can just hang out with my toys, watch TV with them, or just play with one another."
Tony Hale, who has watched the theme develop from a parent's vantage point, said he appreciates that the film never treats technology as the villain. "They didn't come from a perspective like, let's bash technology," he said. "It's more like, nothing is gonna replace true connection. And out of true connection comes creativity; out of true connection comes authenticity. We can integrate technology; it can be a tool to bring us together, but nothing is going to replace that real connection. I think they just nailed that perfectly."
Bringing Forky, Snappy, Blaze, and Bonnie to Life
Hale returns to Forky following the character's introduction in Toy Story 4 and the Disney+ short-form series Forky Asks a Question. Stepping back into the role under director Andrew Stanton, who has been part of the franchise since its beginning, felt like joining a piece of animation history, he said: "Andrew Stanton has such a history with Toy Story, so that was really exciting. He was there from the beginning, so just to be a part of his world was really cool." He's also grown fond of Forky as a character: "He's so simple, and yet he's so full of wonder. He's so curious... Forky's just so full of life, and I'm like, yeah, I want to be more like Forky. So anytime I can step back in his shoes, I love it."
Rabara built Snappy from the ground up, working around a character with a single lens and no mouth. "For me, digital cameras are all joyful memories,” she said. “The smiles, the babies, the birthday parties, the family gatherings." She was conscious of the character's limitations from the start: "I was very cognizant that she doesn't have a mouth; she just has this singular lens... I wanted to bring joy and this excitement to Snappy." Animators later drew directly from her performance in the booth: "In the booth I'm super animated, I love to use a lot of hand gestures," she said. "Talking to the animators, they watched my footage from my first recording session, and then they used that to add little things here and there. When I watch Snappy and her movement, I'm like, oh, that's totally me."
Harris built Blaze from concept art that changed significantly between her audition and the final film. "A lot of times concept art is subject to change, so when I first saw Blaze, she was actually very different than how she ended up on screen," she said. What helped her find the character was Blaze's personality: "Seeing how she loves horses, how she's an equestrian girl, I think that played a key role in me being able to figure out how she sounds." She credited Stanton and co-director Kenna Harris with giving her creative freedom: "They really let me play around with the character... let me play, let me ad-lib, and kind of be wacky and silly and goofy with Blaze."
Spears, meanwhile, inherited an established character. "When I first saw Bonnie, I'm like, this should be easy, because she's just like me. We have the same energy, we match," she said. Even so, settling into the role took some rehearsal: "Trying to actually be Bonnie, it took me a little bit to find out Bonnie, like, herself. Am I gonna do it energetic? Or calm? It was really fun finding out how I was gonna play Bonnie."
Spears, Harris, and Rabara spoke about visiting Pixar's campus during production. "We got to go to Pixar headquarters, and we got to see all the cool characters scattered around the whole place," Spears said. Harris had a similar reaction: "The Incredibles greeted me into the headquarters. It was just so cool seeing all the different characters around. They have a volleyball court, they have a pool, they have a gym all within the studio." Rabara, for her part, got a preview of Snappy in motion: "I actually got to watch a little video that they made at Pixar… she was showing me the little legs moving back and forth, and it was just so cute."
What's Waiting in the Bonus Features
The home release comes with a gag reel pulled from the cast's recording sessions, and Hale, for one, can't wait. "Selfishly, I watch bloopers more than I watch shows. I've seen every Seinfeld blooper, every SNL blooper," he said. "There's something about peeling back the curtain; I want to see the mess-ups, I want to see the improv, all that kind of stuff, so I'm excited to see that." He credited Stanton, along with Josh Cooley, who directed him in Toy Story 4, with giving the cast room to improvise once the scripted lines were in the can: "You always, as a comic actor, appreciate this space. Let's get what's on the page, and then if anything comes up, let's just have fun. This is a freebie. And many times, they use it, which is really exciting."
One of the bloopers shows Rabara flubbing the spelling of the word "friends" in a recording session, and that flub made it into the actual finished film. "Even though it's a flub, that bit made it into the actual film, which was so funny. And I'm so glad that it did." She credited Stanton's directing style for making the happy accident possible: "In the booth, Andrew makes it so easy to feel so at home and play behind the mic. There is a sense of play." She also pointed viewers toward a favorite hidden animation detail worth hunting for on rewatch: "I caught one of the Buzzes hugging a deer leg, and I thought that was just so funny to me. I can't wait to just rewind that and watch it again."
Bringing Toy Story 5 Home
With the film now arriving on disc, Hale confirmed he's still a physical media collector: "I selfishly love it just because it's a record, a physical record. I've got all the box sets from Arrested Development and Veep." He said there's something a shelf of discs offers that streaming doesn't: "There's a warmth of knowing that you have a tangible thing to hold onto."
Spears and Harris, for their part, are simply looking forward to the film reaching households everywhere. "It's so cool because it's all around the world, everyone can watch it, and it's just so exciting," Spears said. "It's gonna be really cool being able to watch it over and over again, without having to pay for it at the theaters." Harris added that revisiting the film since its theatrical premiere has already let her catch small details she missed the first time: "Rewatching the movie helped me, who worked on the movie, see things that I didn't see before. I was like, where was that the first time I watched it?"
Toy Story 5 is available to purchase now on digital platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. The 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD editions arrive Tuesday, September 22nd, ahead of the film's Disney+ premiere this Wednesday, September 23rd.
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