Amy Poehler says Inside Out 2's approach to anxiety ‘so smart’

The Joy voice actor speaks to Yahoo UK alongside Kelsey Mann and Peter Docter about the dangers of letting anxiety take over, and what it was like to return to the beloved Pixar franchise.

Video transcript

I want to ask because inside out obviously helped explain things like emotions and mental health to kids.

At the time, I wondered how do you feel having uh you know, characters like anxiety, envy on we and embarrassment might do the same with the sequel.

Yeah, I think what Pixar does so well is they take these high concepts and they create this visual landscape that we can, that can help us communicate better and talk about stuff.

And in the first one, they managed to find a way to remind us that sadness is um you know, it's OK to kind of sit with sadness and just stay there, which is such a beautiful idea.

Um And the second one, anxiety shows up and kind of uh gets everyone all bothered and what they do creatively and visually is they make it uh the best way I can describe it is there are scenes in the film where anxiety is taking over and changing things and the way in which anxiety is enlisting other people to worry is super funny and so smart.

So I think it's going to be another version of that where you're going to be able to talk to your younger self or your young kids about what anxiety does when it's left unchecked and in a funny, interesting visual way.

I mean, that's the part that I was so excited about with um working on this movie is that you're right, the first film, you know, I think the first film I look, I, I think it does three things.

It's a really funny movie.

That's the, that's the hope with those guys.

Yeah, it's really imaginative and it made a meaningful impact on the world and I'm like, I wanna do all three of these with this movie and especially that, that last one too.

And, uh, um, there is a teenager so she's getting into more complex things and, uh, that time was a really hard time in my life, you know, being a teenager.

And so if we can do something to kind of expand out that vocabulary and have people, you know, talk about those more complicated emotions, uh, it would just be helpful.