Joan Cusack and Greta Lee
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It was in 1999 that Pixar introduced the emotive, bubbly cowgirl Jessie, joining the memorable bunch of Woody, Buzz, and others in Toy Story 2. An emotional beat of the animated film centered around Jessie’s relationship with a kid named Emily, who abandoned the cowgirl toy as she grew up. The makers circle back to the feeling with greater maturity in Toy Story 5, which sees Jessie evolve into an emblem of love and care as she looks after the drifting needs of an eight-year-old Bonnie. The character is voiced with a mix of quirk and concern by Joan Cussak, whose distinctive nasal twang and breathy shrills instantly humanise Jessie. The veteran actor has been comfortably bringing out Jessie’s vulnerabilities since 1999 and calls it a “great experience” of voicing her over the years.
A still from the film
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Special Arrangement
“It is such a fun character. Jessie is so feisty and caring. She feels everything so deeply,” says Joan over a virtual call. However, there’s something far more adorable about the character that Joan has retained. It’s not a dialogue or an action but an exciting sound that the cowgirl makes. “Whenever I have played her, I have been asked to say ‘Yeehaw’ a lot. I kept thinking, ‘Don’t you already have that?’ But then I came to love it. I love saying ‘Yeehaw’. If someone had something great to tell me, I would respond with a ‘Yeehaw’. It has become part of my whole self. That’s my favourite part of playing Jessie,” explains Joan.
Sitting beside her, actor Greta Lee, who voices a new character, Lilypad, in Toy Story 5, pitches in. “Do you have a ‘Yeehaw’ tattoo?”, Greta asks Joan, and the latter replies playfully, “That would be cool. There’s still time. I would do it on my forehead. But then I would have to do it backwards, so that when I look in the mirror, I remember it. I will tell everyone that Greta told me to do it.”
Even as the two share a goofy moment during the conversation, their characters are forever locking horns in Toy Story 5. Lilypad is actually the name of a tablet that Bonnie’s parents gift her to make online friends. Seeing Bonnie getting hooked to screens all day like other kids, Jessie gets anxious and takes charge to not let Lilypad hold control over Bonnie’s life. That way, Lilypad brings an antagonistic tone to the film, voiced with a robotic touch by Greta, who says that it was tricky to bring the character to life as she initially imagined her voice to be “straight, computerised and really dry”. But the approach wasn’t working as the humor was falling flat. Greta then found inspiration for Lilypad in people around her.
“I thought of thinking about Lilypad as a person everyone knows. Someone who wants the best for us and has a razor-sharp focus of achieving some things. So, I had a lot of fun getting inspiration from people in my life who have a quality like Lilypad,” Greta explains.
The conflict between Jessie and Lilypad is also the one that stirs intense conversations, which the film highlights with a share of cheeky nuance. Jessie wants Bonnie to make friends in real-life rather than speaking to imaginary ones over a screen as proposed by Lilypad. The banter goes on. Greta and Joan, however, reach common ground about the relationship that the two share with screens.
A still from the film
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Pixar
“Sometimes I don’t get what’s so fun about it, and sometimes I really like looking at videos online and see how people navigate things. But I always end up feeling bad. Then I struggle with emails too. I end up deleting a lot of things constantly. Then I start feeling, ‘What am I doing?’,” Joan says. “But I love watching TV shows. That’s not tech, is it?”
Greta adds that while she is not on social media, she feels it is “impossible to avoid tech”. “I am trying to find a way for me and my kids to make our screen usage realistic,” she says and concludes, “I also want to prioritise what I would call the ‘normal things’, like looking at the sky, playing outside, talking to humans. Being able to pick up the telephone to call someone and say things with your mouth; to actually laugh rather than hitting a button that says ‘Haha’.”
Toy Story 5 will be released in theatres on June 19
Published – June 15, 2026 05:13 pm IST
