Join The Club
When we heard Conan O’Brien was joining the cast of Toy Story 5 about a year ago, I perked up at the reveal. I think the former late night host is one of the most amusing people alive right now, and I’ve been so curious about what he would bring to Pixar’s OG franchise. He’s playing a potty training toy called Smarty Pants, and I had to ask the movie’s creative team about how such an outlandish character came to be.
When CinemaBlend sat down with Toy Story 5 production designer Bob Pauley about Smarty Pants ahead of the upcoming Disney movie release, he talked to us about the evolution of the character before it became a toilet paper roll voiced by Conan O’Brien. In Pauley’s words:
I think design-wise, we knew about it a little bit early. It was one of the early things we were pretty clear about. But the design went through a lot of different phases. Originally it was like a pair of pants or something. It was weird and fun and awkward. And, it wasn't a design that could probably sustain a feature in terms of acting and so forth. So, we tried a bunch of different things.
Smarty Pants comes into the picture when Jessie goes off on her own adventure to another household outside of Bonnie’s. He’s one of those toys that’s been lying around in some drawer for years since his kid has all the toilet training skills she could ever need. As Pauley shared, the animators knocked around a lot of ideas for the character’s visual design, and it took a few tries to get right.
Deanna [Marsigliese] did a bunch of great designs and then that summer we had a pair of interns, Lily and Naomi, and we gave them a crack in it. Naomi did this first sketch and drew a version of him that looks very much like what kinda started that design. They were on for twelve weeks. And they did a lot of wonderful work, but she kind of tackled a major character in our film.
As it turned out, one of Pixar’s interns ended up being the person to crack the design for Smarty Pants. Here he is in all his glory:
It’s a pretty fun design, isn't it? Now wait until you hear Conan O’Brien’s voice come out of him in Toy Story 5. Pauley also said this about the process:
Then of course we took it and polished it and worked it and so forth moving forward. But yeah, it was a fun character. I mean, it's nuts. Part of the job is to make a toy look like it's very believable and it's part of a world that we know and the Toy Story world and it fits really well. It's just weird enough, you know? Very recognizable. Literally a toilet paper roll.
I always find it interesting how character designs change over the years when a Pixar movie is coming together, because these movies take a long time. Pauley also told me this fun tidbit about a Toy Story regular who nearly had the role instead of O'Brien.
I think early on what was fun was that Andrew Stanton, the director, was the temp voice for it. And, he's really good. I was like, ‘Oh man, maybe he should do it.’ And then they were trying voices in Conan and it was like, ‘OK, that's even better.’
I absolutely cannot wait to see Smarty Pants in action. As Pauley also told us, Toy Story 5 is very much Jessie’s movie since it explores her backstory. The Pixar sequel hits theaters on June 19. You can check out what critics are saying about it following its world premiere earlier this week. Until then, may you remember that even a roll of toilet paper can serve as inspiration on a big movie!
