‘Inside Out 2’ Director on Capturing Growing Up as a Teenager Through Riley and Joy: ‘What Does It Feel Like to Be Replaced?’

variety.com:

Matt Minton mminton@variety.com Director Kelsey Mann, producer Mark Nielsen, writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein and composer Andrea Datzman sat down with Clayton Davis, Variety’s Senior Awards Editor, at the Variety FYC Screening presented by Disney & Pixar, to chat about their work on “Inside Out 2.” The billion-dollar animated hit “Inside Out 2” introduces an older Riley, now age 13, as she enters high school and discovers a new set of emotions including Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

As a director, Mann was drawn in to how universal the experience of being a teenager is: “It’s always this thing that everybody kind of knows about.” For “Inside Out 2,” Mann assembled an advisory group of teenage girls ages 13 to 16 to give their thoughts on every version of the film.

While Mann imagined having to really sell Pixar on it, he recalls how open they were to the idea. For Mann, it was important for “teenagers today to be able to look up at the screen and say they got that right.” Nielsen worked as an associate producer on 2015’s “Inside Out” and admitted that the “great experience” of working on the first film created exceptionally high expectations for the sequel. “There were a lot of nerves but I think everybody felt it [together].

And you try to just turn that into energy that focuses on making the film better.” LeFauve discussed how the sequel began with Mann pitching the studio: “What if anxiety hijacked Riley?” While the new emotions have proved to be a major talking point of the film since its release back in June, the writers had to first prove to executive producer Pete Docter, creator of the first “Inside Out,” why they weren’t.