Hale tells he “would love” to catch up with the ‘Inside Out 2’ lead character Riley as a teenager or young adult
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Tony Hale has a couple of ideas for Pixar!
While speaking with PEOPLE at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival about the premiere of his new movie Sketch, Hale, 53, got to talking about the possibility of a third Inside Out film.
Hale lent his voice to the record-breaking Inside Out 2, embodying the emotion of fear and taking over for Bill Hader. While he can’t confirm whether there will be a third film in the blockbuster series, Hale “would love” for a follow-up to catch up with the lead character Riley (Kensington Tallman) as a teenager or young adult.
“This might have been in [Inside Out 2], but almost not listening to the narrative in your head. Because the narrative in my head was like, ‘Everybody’s got it together except me,’” he says before remarking, “Which, by the way, still continues into adulthood.”
Hale continues: “If that can be encapsulated into an emotion, I think that would be a good one because everybody’s in the same boat,” adding that his proposed emotion for a third film also “ties into fear.”
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The Veep alum “would love to see Riley just as an adult at different stages” in further films. “I want to just see what Pixar comes up with.”
In the first film, five core emotions ruled Riley: Fear, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Liza Lapira); in Inside Out 2, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) were added to the mix.
“Just even the difference between fear and anxiety was, fear was a reaction to something that is actually there,” says Hale. “And anxiety is a response to something that could be there or is not there, but is a ‘What if?’”
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Hale opened up to PEOPLE about times he’s recently applied the “What if?” to his personal experience, including dropping his 18-year-old daughter off at college.
“I mean, my daughter’s 18 years old and, you know, you’re constantly trying not to live in the ‘what if?’ ” Hale said of his daughter, Loy Ann, whom he shares with wife Martel Thompson. “I mean, good lord, I’ve lived in so many narratives in my head as a parent that have never happened, but man, it feels like they’re happening or that it could happen.”Hale’s upcoming film, Sketch, follows his character, Taylor, a grieving father, who is thrown into supernatural chaos when his young children accidentally find a magical pond that brings a series of his daughter’s grief-fueled drawings to life as a variety of dangerous monsters.