Anxiety and her friends have taken over headquarters in Inside Out 2. The teen years can certainly be chaotic! In order to tell an accurate story, Director Kelsey Mann and his team drew inspiration from their families as well as a group of teenage girls nicknamed Riley's Crew.
Inside Out 2 Director Kelsey Mann Talks Riley's Crew & Story Inspiration
Riley is 13 now, what's the worst that could happen? Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) are busy thinking everything is running smoothly when bam! New Emotions! Headquarters undergoes a sudden demolition and the core group finds themselves face-to-face with Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and she's not alone. Joining her are Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
I spent some time at the beautiful Pixar Campus getting a behind the scenes look at Inside Out 2. From character development and storyboards to sketches and finalizing animation, it was amazing to see just a small piece of what it took to bring this film to life. Director Kelsey Mann and producer Mark Neilsen drew on inspiration from watching their own children turn into teens for the story but they knew they also needed to call in some experts. Who might that be? A group of teenage girls, nicknamed Riley's Crew who helped Kelsey and his team understand what life is like for girls during this time. They also sought the help of psychologists Dr. Lisa Damour and Dr. Dacher Keltner.
Getting It Right With Riley's Crew & Dr. Lisa Damour
Mark: One of our experts that we leaned on heavily is Dr. Lisa Damour. We met with her multiple times just to really talk about this age and what's going on emotionally when you're this age. We also knew that we are not teenage girls and that it might be helpful to hear from people who are so we created a trust that we call Riley's crew. We had nine teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 18. They're all in high school now but they were in middle school, a lot of them, when they started. Every four months we would show the movie to them, meet with them, and have a note session. [We would] get their thoughts on the characters, Riley's relationship with her friend group, what's going on with them emotionally, and does that resonate?
Kelsey: Are we getting it right? Or is this true? We're leaning on our crew heavily too but a lot of them aren't teenagers anymore. So that group was incredibly helpful. They gave sometimes better notes than the people who work here. They're fantastic. They treated it like an assignment, it was amazing. They really took it seriously.
How Family Inspired Inside Out 2
Kelsey: I started in January of 2020 on this movie, and then we went into quarantine. We'd be in our offices at home and then right outside the door was our teenagers, so it was like research was right there. Because when I started, my daughter was 13 and my son was 14. So I'm like this is the exact age I wanted her to be in the movie. You're always pulling from your lives and every movie I've done here we're always talking about what it's like to be alive and be a person, father, husband, whatever it may be.
Mark: This really is a parental story even though it takes place in Riley's mind. There's something incredibly universal about this story and these emotions that we all have. Even Joy, who is the protagonist of this story, has a very parental view of Riley, all the emotions do. They're there to do their very best, to do whatever they need to protect their girl and to steer her the right way. The original film was based on Pete Doctor's observations of his daughter as she was growing up and going through changes and becoming a young teen. Having the parental lens on this film has been incredibly helpful.
Kelsey: [A] big reason why I'm making this movie is I want to make it for everyone but I'm also making it for my little girl. I wish I had a movie like this when I was a teenager and [that's] the power of the first film. When I went home to think about whether I should say yes to this opportunity or not, I looked at the first movie and it's everything I love about movies. It was really fun. It was really imaginative and it made a meaningful impact on the world. That's why I'm here. I want to do that. If I can make some teenager's life just that much better, like the first film did for many people…So I went back and said 100% yes. I'm just really excited to be able to put this out into the world.
Mark: We also were blessed to have some amazing women in key creative roles on this show. Meg LeFauve is back, she was a writer on the original film. Our editor Maurissa (Horwitz) is just a powerhouse. Over half of our story team were female story artists, which was a first for Pixar. Andrea Datzman is the composer of the score and this is the first feature film at Pixar that's ever had a female composer and she's just brought so much to this film.
What Inside Out 2 Is All About
Kelsey: It's all about acceptance, learning that you can love who you are, despite your flaws, and you don't need to be perfect in order to be loved. And that's really what I wanted to make. Having that be the foundation of the film, [when] I pitched that to Pete, he [said] that's why we should make this movie. What's so great about the first film is that it gave us a language to talk about these things that we're all dealing with that are kind of hard to talk about or that you don't want to talk about.
And it's hard to get teenagers to talk at all, let alone what they're feeling and thinking. Part of being able to deal with it is being able to talk about it and name it and that's what we're doing with this movie. Not only naming it, but we're giving them faces. When we designed anxiety, I'm like that's her! That's what my anxiety looks like, that's what she does. I hope it does a lot of good in the world.
Inside Out 2 releases in theaters June 14, 2024.
*this interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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