When you’re an actor, you never really know what characters of yours are going to become popular, but Maya Hawke has had some good luck on that front. Along with playing Stranger Things’ fan-favorite Robin Buckley, last year she voiced the Pixar character Anxiety, and it was the biggest blockbuster hit of 2025. She just opened up to Amy Poehler about what playing the character means to her over a year later.
Maya Hawke fittingly was on the podcast her Inside Out 2 costar hosts, Good Hang with Amy Poehler. During their conversation, the 27-year-old talked about being behind the viral animated character. In her words:
It’s been one of the great honors. Like my little sister was asking me the other day, she was like, ‘Do you get annoyed if someone asks you to do the Anxiety voice, or do you get annoyed?’ And I was like ‘Not at all.’
When Inside Out 2 came out last summer, it instantly became a huge release, ultimately making $1.67 billion worldwide, topping the worldwide box office in 2024. Hawke’s character of Anxiety was a huge highlight of it all, emulating many’s own experiences with the emotion. As the actress continued:
Sometimes, if someone wants me to go put on like an ice cream scooper uniform, I’m like ‘I’m done with the ice cream scooper.’ There was a while where that wasn’t true. But this movie, that character, I’ve had so many people feel so seen by it, and little kids feel so seen by it, and it helped them understand their brain better.
Maya Hawke feels like perhaps she’s at the point where dressing up as Robin in her Scoops Ahoy costume might be a little old for her, especially considering she first donned the outfit back in 2019’s Season 3. However, she doesn’t see the same being true for her Inside Out 2 character. It’s a good thing too, because the movie beautifully encapsulates what it’s like to deal with anxiety in a way that generations to come will likely remember. They'll continue to come up to Hawke and talk about her about for her whole life.
During the co-stars' chat about being part of Inside Out 2, they commiserated about how “rare” it is to be part of a movie that hits all the benchmarks of success like the Pixar sequel did – including through our glowing Inside Out 2 review. Hawke called it a “rainbow,” pointing out how wild it is that it made over a $1 billion dollars and is “good for the world.” Hawke also said this about being approached to embody Anxiety:
I’ll get a call from a friend of mine who is a parent…and be like ‘Hey, would you do a recording, my kid’s going through this hard time, would you record something in the voice for my kid?’ And I’ll be like ‘Sure,’ and I’ll turn on the little speaker and be like [in Anxiety’s voice] ‘Hi, oh, I know it’s really scary when parents have to go to the doctor’s office. And I know that it makes you nervous, but the thing is you just take deep breaths and trust that your daddy will be safe, and that the doctors are going to take great care of him.’ And so, I like will do things like that, and I don’t mind at all.
It certainly sounds like playing Anxiety has allowed Maya Hawke to connect with people and find a positive way she can impact others by embracing the character further. Elsewhere in the interview, Hawke said that playing Anxiety has taught her to show love to the anxious part of herself, invite it into the conversation and give it a “comfy chair” like Riley does in the movie.
We don’t know if Inside Out 3 is happening, but we have some ideas about what should happen. Both Hawke and Poehler expressed their interest in returning to Joy and Anxiety should there be another sequel.
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