Attending the Inside Out press junket was like watching a mashup of The Office and SNL. The entire cast had us rolling in the aisles and I didn’t want it to end!
Here are highlights from the interview:
How do you relate to the emotion that you’re playing?
Mindy Kaling / Disgust: Sure, I think that the character discussed has a lot of qualities of a very impatient, judgmental adolescent girl and because I seem to be recurring in playing that role over and over again in my career – she just says the things I say on a really bad day – the thing I really wanna say but then don’t say it. Basically, in my mind the parenthetical role or her lines is “I can’t, I can’t with this” it’s just like what she’s always thinking.
Lewis Black / ANGER: For me it’s just that I’ve spent – my family argued all the time, that’s what we did, that was the way we expressed love and it’s always been so – that kind of anger is always kind of being a part of me and my mother couldn’t cook.
Amy Poehler / JOY: Well, I think there are some characteristics of Joy – like just maybe some unrelenting energy and bossiness perhaps that Pete, Jonas and Ronnie thought I could pull off, maybe from the other characters that I’ve played and I do think she just likes living in the moment and maybe like to think that I do that too, but I aspire to be more like Joy and I think that characters in the film get all of the range of emotions. Everybody feels anger, fear, sadness, joy; each in their own journey.
Bill Hader / FEAR: I think yes, I’m a big whimp, I don’t know. I guess he needs to play Fear.
Phyllis Smith / Sadness: Likewise I’m just a mess and I’m a real sad sack. I sit around and mope all day and I think they saw that effervescent side of me and decided to hone in on it. No, it’s actually my insecurities that I think they – you know, those little quirks that I have – that Pete was able to glean out of me so – yes.
If you could play another emotion, what would it be and why?
Amy Poehler: I’d like to play Anger.
That feels like the one that next to Joy and Sadness – for me is in the driver’s seat and it’s just so funny, Anger is so funny!
Bill Hader: I would say Anger is the fun one, yes, I would like to play Anger. It’s just very therapeutic, you know. I just felt like when I was watching Lewis’ thing I’m like “God it would be nice just to go into work and be like AAAAHHH.” Yes, because whatever the thing if you – because sometimes in these things you got to do – when you do a take in a movie you do it and then you get some breathing room and then you get time to relax and you do it again but in this they do a series so they say, “Do a series of that line.” So it’s like “Open the door, open the door; open the door.”
And you just start to go crazy so it would be nice to be Anger.
Phyllis Smith: Yes, I’d like to be Angry as well as Disgusted. Yes, Anger and Disgust.
Lewis Black: Yes Disgust, that’s really my second place. I spend a lot of time on the road in restaurants listening to people talk and I’m just – I’m disgusted.
Mindy Kaling: I think I would be Anger. It’s not necessarily socially acceptable to be angry – a woman – and so that would be a fun thing to be able to do.
Phyllis Smith: What does that say about us that we all wanna be angry?
Amy Poehler: No one wants to be Joy, isn’t it interesting?
Bill Hader: Yes, isn’t that weird? We’re older; we’re bolder, Inside Out 2.
What are the Disney or Pixar movies that are really tied up in your emotions, the ones that you fell in love with it as children?
Bill Hader: Up – the other movie that Pete and Jonas did Up – by far was just unreal; I thought it was really great.
You remember that Ichabod Crane Disney one – do you remember that? I dressed up like Ichabod Crane for Halloween like for four years in a row because I was obsessed with that. It was great. This was a couple of years ago.
Phyllis Smith: I’m just an Up person as well as – I date myself but it’s like Cinderella and the older Disney ones.
Amy Poehler: A meaty character part for a woman, Cruella De Vil. May we all get to our Cruella De Vil stage, in a manner of months and now that I have kids, watching Pixar movies with them, they love them all. I love Wall – E, it’s like one of – I just love the first 35 minutes of no talking. Again, like the audacity – to make a movie like that. It’s like the big risk, big reward philosophy of Pixar. This film is really high concept and every film right now is going external, everything is about made up stakes – the world is ending and super heroes, you have to get the diamond from the computer chip place…
So all those movies which– I know a lot about obviously, no they’re all – it’s so bad ass that Pixar went in. You know Pixar was like “You wanna see some dangerous stuff? Why don’t you go inside someone’s mind? Do you wanna see stuff like a terrain that you live in everyday but know nothing about how it looks? We’ll tell you.” Like Mindy said, this is what this is called now. So it’s really – anyway.
Mindy Kaling: Up really made me feel – I guess as a writer – thinking like you can do anything t and as you get older that it’s harder to find movies that do that. You see things that you’re like “That was great and I could see how you could do that.” To not see the process is – those were really the things that stay with you. We were saying this earlier is that there are some artists were certain – Pixar, the Cohen brothers, Alexander Paine where no matter what they do you’re like I;m in – and Pete Doctor is one of those types of people that when I saw UP I felt that, and so this is a dream come true. Disney when I was younger, since I bare no passing resemblance to any princesses is hard to really attach to them; but I really liked Robin Hood as portrayed by a fox and I thought that he was very dashing and while not human, I had a crush on him. Is that okay to say? Is that all right to say?
Lewis Black: I was never a child. My mother carried me until I was 27. No, Up, had a big effect. Up just irritated me because it was like – I was old enough at that point to go “Yes, you know what I wanna do for the next couple of hours is confront death; that’s kind of a fun thing for me to think about.” Someone who’s spending his whole life avoiding thinking about it and if it’s literally like oh boy, I’m gonna die. And the big one for me was – the Disney one’s – was Fantasia because that was the one that made me go, “I can’t wait to do whatever it is they’re doing.” You could laugh at that, that’s funny.
Inside Out is in theaters on Friday, June 19 and is Rated PG for PRETTY GREAT! I adore Inside Out. It is unique, delightful, funny and full of emotion.
* Photos courtesy of Disney. We attended a press junket for editorial purposes.
