Tim Allen has spent decades voicing Buzz Lightyear, which means he knows a thing or two about making a character sound right. But apparently, some of the stranger actorly warm-up rituals he picked up came from a very different project, one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. In a new interview, Allen hilariously recalls working with the late great Alan Rickman on Galaxy Quest and the voice warm-up lessons he learned from his fellow Quest cast members.
While Allen and Tom Hanks were discussing their voice prep for Woody and Buzz during a promotional appearance for the upcoming Toy Story 5, the Shifting Gears star brought up the odd vocal exercises he witnessed while making Galaxy Quest with Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Sam Rockwell and Tony Shalhoub. In a hilarious clip from the EW interview showing the longtime Pixar duo promoting the upcoming sequel on the 2026 movie calendar, Allen breaks down his approach as:
Mine is horribly weird. Throat coat. And then, a glass of warm water with a straw in it. And you just blow bubbles. [bubble blowing imitation] So you don’t constrict your voice. I did Galaxy Quest, the movie with Alan, the late, lovely Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub… Sigourney. And all of them in between takes are going, ‘Yellow bus, yellow bus, yellow bus, yellow bus!” “What in the hell are they doing?” You know? “Yellow… yell…yelllalal…”
Allen added that he still did not fully know what the exercise was supposed to accomplish, but the image of Signorney Weaver doing it clearly stuck with him. He continued:
I don’t know what that is. They all go… [lalala his tongue crazily] But to see Signorney doing it is quite funny.
That sounds exactly like the kind of backstage detail that makes Galaxy Quest even more lovable. For anyone who somehow missed it, the flick is a sci-fi comedy about Star Trek-style actors who get mistaken for the real heroes they once played on TV and are pulled into an actual alien war. Knowing Allen was standing around between takes, watching Rickman, Weaver and the rest of the cast fire off tongue-twisting vocal drills only adds another layer of theater-kid chaos to the whole thing.
Galaxy Quest starred Allen as Jason Nesmith, the self-satisfied former lead of a canceled sci-fi series whose cast gets dragged into a real intergalactic conflict. Rickman played Alexander Dane, a classically trained actor permanently irritated by his prosthetic-headed alien role and his inescapable catchphrase. The 1999 film has since become a cult favorite, especially among Star Trek fans who recognize it as both one of the best ‘90s sci-fi movies and a testament to the affection underneath it. Some fans even consider it unofficially one of the best Star Trek movies.
The funny thing about Allen’s story is that it fits Rickman’s Galaxy Quest character almost too well. Alexander Dane is exactly the kind of actor who would have strong opinions about vocal technique, breath work and not shredding one’s instrument while surrounded by rubber aliens and spaceship sets. Rickman, of course, brought real stage gravity to the part, which is why Dane’s exasperation was so funny. He played the absurdity straight enough that the joke had bones.
Allen sounds both amused and genuinely bewildered by the full-body seriousness of the warm-ups that took place around him. That contrast is pretty much Galaxy Quest in miniature. The movie is about one actor wondering what in the world everyone is doing while the movie around him somehow turns the nonsense into gold. Is the movie meta on more than one level? Absolutely.
Now, these days, Tim Allen is back in the voice recording booth beside Tom Hanks for Toy Story 5. The old Galaxy Quest memory serves as a great reminder of the many different kinds of performance he has had to navigate. Sometimes being Buzz Lightyear means protecting the voice with tea and bubble-blowing. Sometimes being a fake space captain means trying not to laugh while Alan Rickman and co. say “yellow bus” like the fate of the galaxy depends on it.
Toy Story 5 hits theaters June 19, 2026. Check your local listings for showtimes and tickets.
