Tony Hale on the perfect Veep finale and how Gary helped him land his gig on Toy Story 4
You would think Tony Hale’s character on the cynical, sweary political satire Veep would have little to do with an animated fork in family-friendly Toy Story 4. But Pixar bosses put the two together and used it to get Hale signed on.
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Tony Hale says that last month’s final episode of Veep after seven seasons was a difficult and emotional time for him and his castmates, who he now considers family for life.
The bond, he says, between the actors on the long-running, award-winning HBO political satire was all the stronger because of the appalling things their scheming, petty, venal and sometimes downright stupid characters did to each other on-screen.
“It was very hard,” Hale says of saying goodbye to the show that had played such a huge role in his life.
“We, as a cast, like each other a little too much so those last days were very emotional. The characters were so awful to each other that I think it was balanced with the tremendous love we have for each other off set.”
Hale won two Emmys for playing Gary Walsh, the downtrodden, deluded, devoted personal assistant to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ would-be president Selina Myers.
While audiences looked on agog as Myers threw Walsh under the bus one last time in the finale (SPOILER ALERT!) — making him take the rap for a financial fraud so she could finally achieve her dream of sitting in the Oval Office — Hale says the ending was just right. “It was just atrocious what Selina did to Gary, however, I think it’s the only thing that would have broken him out of the abusive cycle,” Hale says.
“So it was actually a hidden blessing because he was in this incredible co-dependent abusive cycle that I don’t think he would have broken out of if it weren’t for that.”
Fans upset that Veep is over can take some comfort in the fact a little bit of Gary lives on thanks to Hale’s voice role in Toy Story 4, the latest chapter in Pixar’s acclaimed animated series about toys who come to life when people aren’t around.
Hale plays Forky, a toy created at kindergarten from a plastic spork, pipe-cleaners, plasticine and ice cream sticks — and suffering an existential crisis from which series hero Woody (Tom Hanks) must rescue him and teach him his place in the world.
When the Pixar producers contacted a beyond-thrilled Hale to play the part, it was in no small part thanks to what they had seen him do on Veep as well as his other celebrated role as the neurotic Buster Bluth on sit-com Arrested Development.
“It was cool because when they brought me in, I was in a state of ‘oh my gosh, this is crazy’,” says Hale.
“But they showed me some animation of Forky that they had attached to lines from Veep or Arrested Development that I had said as Gary or Buster on those shows.
“So they showed that he definitely has a little bit of this neurotic, overwhelmed energy to him so it was really fun to kind of go off that and find the character. If you take Buster and Gary and Forky, they are kind of like the neurotic Avengers, ready to take on the world with nervous energy.”
In keeping with advice from one his acting teachers, who told him to always look within to find the right characteristics for any part, Hale says he strongly resonates with the relentlessly curious, childlike Forky.
“There are many times in life where I am just like ‘what’s going on? Why am I here?’ The curiosity and the wonder that he has — I tend to be that guy who wants to hear people’s stories and what’s going on. He also has a very simple way of thinking and I kind of think of myself that way many times.
“There is this potential web series that might happen with Forky where he just goes around and asks a lot of questions and while we were doing it, these are probably questions that I should know the answer to but I don’t. So I was thankful to have the opportunity to explore them and Forky has been a real gift to me.”
Hale isn’t the only small-screen star joining the celebrated duo of Hanks’ Woody and Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story 4.
Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks plays a sinister talking doll called Gabby Gabby and series regular Annie Potts, currently on television as the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed “Meemaw” Connie on Young Sheldon reprises her role as Bo Peep after sitting out the third film.
“They are both take-no-prisoner kind of girls,” Potts says with a laugh of any similarities between Connie and Bo Peep. Her Toy Story character has been reinvented from demure, porcelain, lamp decoration to a ninja-like, free spirited lost toy and Potts says it’s a welcome sign of the times.
“It’s very refreshing to see that and to play it and to have it in the theatres and on the airwaves so that everybody is reminded of how smart, powerful and able women are,” she says.
It’s been 20 years since Potts worked on Toy Story 2 and nine years since the third chapter became the first animated film to crack the US$1billion mark at the box office and seemingly wrapped up the trilogy.
The new film has been nearly five years in the making after false starts, script rewrites and Pixar boss John Lasseter (who was originally due to direct), leaving the company in the wake of sexual harassment allegations.
But all the while diehard fans — and a whole generation who had grown up with Woody and Buzz — had been clamouring for more adventures.
Potts puts that ongoing passion down to “the quality of the art” and the uncanny way the Pixar writers can tackle deep and important themes and issues in what are ostensibly kids’ movies.
“People are obsessed with it because it’s extraordinary,” she says.
“It’s called Toy Story but really it’s human story. The qualities and characteristics that these characters have are those of humans. As most animated things are, they just stand in for the human condition and it’s so beautiful. They are like fairytales.
READ MORE:
TIME FOR TOY STORY TO GROW UP AND MOVE ON
END OF AN ERA FOR VEEP WORTH WATCHING
STARS LOSE IT OVER TOY STORY 4’S ENDING
“At heart, all of their films are about love. It’s really the only subject matter in the world worth discussing, isn’t it? It’s hilarious and touching. That’s what they are — divining rods for love and the human spirit.”
Toy Story 4 opens on Thursday.
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