The success of Inside Out 2 depended partly on its voice actors making each emotion sound instantly recognizable, believable, and emotionally authentic.
But how exactly did they do it?
In this article, we’ll hear from the actors themselves to find out how they got into character.
But first, in case you fell asleep for the whole summer, here’s a lowdown on the animation box office smash that was Inside Out 2.
It’s a follow-up to the 2015 box office smash Inside Out, which claimed kudos and a bucket of cash to the tune of $858 million worldwide for its originality and stunning visuals.
A sweet and, for a finish, quite moving portrayal of the emotions in control of a young pre-teen girl’s mind, Inside Out introduced us to Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust.
With Inside Out 2, the focus is on a fresh cohort of personified emotions.
They take over headquarters, elbowing out Joy and the other original characters, who have to find a way to wrestle their control back.
Led by Anxiety, this group includes Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment, and Nostalgia, and together, it provides an altogether much more complex portrayal of a teenage girl’s inner trials and tensions.
The Inside Out 2 voice actors got the emotional tone right by drawing on personal experiences, experimenting with vocal delivery, and fully embracing the distinctive personalities of their characters.
In doing so, they were able to keep laughs still very much in place, while giving an authentic picture of what it means to be a teenager.
Of course, it helped that there were more than a few stalwart voice actors on the team.
The original characters include hilarious, whip-smart Amy Poehler as Joy and Arrested Development scene stealer Tony Hale stepping into Bill Hader’s shoes as Fear.
But the additional emotions are not new to portraying all the big feels either.
Stranger Things standout Maya Hawke does a wonderful turn as frazzled Anxiety, while The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri gives her voice a great workout as Envy.
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“I have a voice in my brain going at all times telling me all the things that I’m doing wrong, always, 100%,” she told Jordan Klepper on The Daily Show.
“And all the things I’m worried about, and all the ways that maybe I could improve the things that I’m worried about and kind of correct the trajectory of my crashing plane!”
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Image Courtesy of E M, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Ayo Edebiri also pulled from her own teenage experiences to give Envy a spin whereby the character is not tangled up in spite or resentfulness, but rather “comes from a place of positivity.”
in a red carpet interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Edebiri noted:
“I think the root emotion [of envy] is actually adoration.”
This allowed her as a voice artist in an animation movie to play around with different vocal ranges, tone, and pace, expressing a wide array of envy variations from praise and excitement to pain, yearning, and good-old fashioned green-eyed monster vibes.
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Also new to the crew is Tony Hale as Fear. No stranger to animation movies, Hale was the voice of Forky in Toy Story 4.
That character was also scared and skittish, finding himself in an existential crisis where he questioned the deeper meaning of his life as a toy.
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Image Courtesy of The Bui Brothers, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
However, in Inside Out 2, Hale’s Fear character is a mosaic of this emotion in all its manifestations.
As a voice actor, he felt he was able to go all in in articulating these variations. Hale explains:
“With voiceover, you’re not typically with the cast. You’re just by yourself. So, the director is playing the other emotions.
“But what’s fun is that you can just lose it (in the performance)! …I will say that when it comes to camera acting and VO, I’ll do kind of the same thing on camera that I will in front of the mic.
I’ll act as wild because you kind of want that same energy.”
The other newcomers to the movie include Paul Walter Hauser as Embarrassment, Adèle Exarchopoulos as Ennui, and June Squibb as Nostalgia. Lisa Lapira also takes over Disgust duties from Mindy Kaling.
As her first big animation role, Lapira states that when coming to work with Pixar, she had “Really, really high expectations, and this by far exceeded them!”
However, stepping up to the mic after Mindy Kaling was a pretty big move for any actor no matter the stage of their career. But Lapira claims that she didn’t try to follow Kaling’s performance but rather focused solely on her character.
She said in an interview with Screen Rant Plus.
Throwing yourself into the character can be hugely fun, but it’s not as easy as many of these seasoned animation voice artists make it look.
It can be hard to find the real essence of your character and their voice, particularly when you’re standing solo in a voice booth with no other cast members to play off.
To ensure the voice behind the character in an animated film doesn’t come across as stilted or false, it’s a good idea to look for ways to keep it front and center in your performance.
Ramesh M – International English voice actor
Ramesh M. of Voice Crafters tends to do this by holding a visual representation of someone he has come across in real life, and, as he explains:
“Has spoken to and can melt into their skin, so I can mimic them as closely as possible.”
“Obviously, without them knowing!”
Ramesh M. – International English voice actor at Voice Crafters
Ramesh played Mr. Tanwar in the animated film, The Abominable Snow Baby, produced by UK broadcaster Channel 4.
The film, based on a story by Terry Pratchett, was the third most-watched show on Channel 4 over Christmas 2021, with more than 3 million viewers.
Ramesh’s character was: “A plump Indian gentleman with a strong Indian accent. I immediately thought of a neighbor of mine who looked just like this character – bald and with a moustache! It helped me get into and stay in character because I tried to speak like him all the time.”
Whatever the different tools of the trade that voice actors use to “survive” (to paraphrase Lapira above), there’s no denying that some animated characters have become our favorites because of the authenticity and depths of character that we fully believe are behind the sometimes larger-than-life voices.
If you’re looking for experienced and expert voice actors for your animation film project, look no further than Voice Crafters. Our exceptional artists are fully vetted before becoming members of the platform so that we – and as a result, you– can be confident of their quality and professionalism.
Simply post your project on our online platform. Make sure you request custom auditions based on your script (it’s free!) to really hone in on the voice that’s right for your brand and message.
Or if you need help casting the right talent for you, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to help!
Maya Hawke claims that to create her character of Anxiety in Inside Out 2 she had to tune into the agitated whispering on a constant loop in her own brain.
The new characters were Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawk; Envy, voiced by Ayo Edebiri; Embarrassment, voiced by Paul Walter; Ennui, voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos as Ennui, and Nostalgia, vocied by June Squibb.
Voice actors can draw on personal experiences, observation, imagination, and physical performance to understand their characters. They then use elements such as tone, pitch, pace, volume, and energy to bring those personalities to life.
Inside Out 2 was a huge success and is currently the highest-grossing animated film of all time. It set this record six weeks after it was released in cinemas, amassing $1.46bn (£1.13bn) at box offices worldwide and overtaking Frozen II, which made $1.45bn in 2019.
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