Toy Story 5 star tells of 'new threat' to childhood

Grossing more than $764 million in its first three weeks and predicted to make $1.2 billion by industry experts, Toy Story 5 has already smashed multiple box office records. Inspired by the character of Jessie, Taylor Swift even co-wrote an original song, I Knew It, I Knew It, with Jack Antonoff for the film, which she performed on the piano at the premiere, before dueting the franchise classic You’ve Got a Friend in Me with Randy Newman. The movie’s success, since its release last month, is certainly one in the eye for the Disney executives who turned double Oscar winning director Andrew Stanton down for a job three times. Hired instead by Pixar, since the company was bought by Disney in 2006, he has won an Oscar for WALL-E (2008), having already clinched one for Finding Nemo in 2003. His acceptance speech for Finding Nemo went viral, after he gave a shout-out to his high school drama teacher, Phil Perry, and publicly professed his love for his wife, Julie. A great storyteller, Andrew once said: “Frankly, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.” After co-writing the first four Toy Story films, this is the first he has directed. And, as Pixar’s second animator after John Lasseter, 30 years after the Toy Story franchise launched, he is clearly making a splash, with the latest film on course to become one of its most successful. He also had no problem attracting a stellar cast - Woody (Tom Hanks) Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) Jessie (Joan Cusack) Bullseye (Alan Cumming) Lilypad (Greta Lee) Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien) Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) and Snappy (Shelby Rabara). Andrew, 60, tells The Arts Hour on the BBC’s World Service: “There's usually an eagerness to come back. If we've done our job right, they've had a good time and they've been very happy with the results. They [the actors] love being a character. They love being something that's slightly disassociated from them. And there's a sort of immortality that they get to see of a character that lives on beyond them, if you've done it right.” Alongside the toys in the latest movie is Lilypad - the first tech device to star in Toy Story - an electronic tablet, played by The Morning Show star Greta Lee, 43, that disrupts the toys’ cosy world. Greta says the iPad-style character and the toys start off at odds with each other, She says: “She's not quite a villain, but she is the new threat to the toys. Yes. They start off with a very, I think, a very funny antagonistic relationship and dynamic, but they're all wanting the same thing. They all want what's best for Bonnie, who's the main child of this movie, and they just have very, very different ideas about how to go about it.” The introduction of Lilypad is reflective of how modern children’s world has changed, with the advent of affordable tech and kids increasingly choosing screen time over conventional play with soft toys, dolls and games. Speaking about the introduction of tech into our daily lives and into a child’s world, Andrew says: “The jury's out on what that is going to do over time. But the closest thing I can relate it to is when television came into the household, which was before my day. “My parents talked about it all the time. But it was still relatively new by the time I came [along] in the 60s. They were still worrying it was going to rot your brain if you watched too much of it and stuff. But it was clearly never going to go away. And I think tech's the same way.” Diagnosed with ADHD in 2012, Andrew, who has two children, Ben and Audrey, with his high school sweetheart, Julie Stanton, who he married in 1991, lives in Mill Valley, California, and is a massive Arsenal fan. He included a scene mimicking the north London football club’s famous offside trap - a defensive tactic - along with other Arsenal references in his 2012 sci-fi adventure movie John Carter. While not referring directly to his ADHD, Andrew does say: "My strategy has always been: be wrong as fast as we can... which basically means, we’re gonna screw up, let’s just admit that.” Originally from Rockport, Massachusetts, his dad Ron founded a company that worked on radars for the US Department of Defence, while his mum Gloria left her career as an actress to bring up her children and look after the family home. Directing a comedy sketch show on Super 8 film in high school, where he enjoyed acting, Andrew studied character animation at the California Institute of Arts, beginning his career in the late 1980s working on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, before joining Pixar in 1990. The key, says Andrew, to creating a successful Toy Story film, is making sure that he likes the characters. He says: “I've never really worried about who the audience is. It's always from the get-go been [about] trying to please myself and just go and be honest with it. “I have to spend four years with them [the characters] on the page and on the screen before anybody else gets to see them. I have to enjoy being with them. There's some familiar faces that you want to see again. But things have moved on. People change. “If you're fortunate to keep living, you realise there's another chapter, even when you thought the chapters were done. You shift it about every four or five years in your life, and so I've sort of embraced that same idea with all the characters.” While Andrew has definitely livened up the toy cupboard by throwing Lilypad into the mix, he doesn’t share his parents’ sense of foreboding about new technological advances and he certainly doesn’t see them as a threat to Toy Story. Famously, saying of the creative process, “art is messy, art is chaos,” Andrew continues: “There is a mad science to planning what is spontaneous and seems natural in life. And you have to work at adding imperfection. The computer wants to do things perfectly, but it's the imperfections of life that make it interesting. And that's where a lot of our efforts go.” *This interview was adapted from The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service, which is available on BBC Sounds