How Pixar Took ‘Toy Story 4’ Star Forky From “Trash” to Disney+’s Treasure

“TRASH!”

For the Pixar character, Forky (voiced by Tony Hale), it’s as much a catchphrase as it is a barbaric yawp that encapsulates everything he feels about himself. Forky made his debut in Pixar’s Toy Story 4 when Bonnie, the little girl who has inherited all of Andy’s beloved toys, crafts a new toy out of pipe cleaners, googly eyes, a popsicle stick, and a spork that Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) surreptitiously pulls from the trash for her. When Forky comes into consciousness, he is shellshocked and keeps insisting he is trash. Over the course of Toy Story 4, Forky learns the power of being a toy. However, he hasn’t learned everything about being alive.

That’s where Forky Asks a Question comes in. Forky Asks a Question is part of Pixar’s first-ever original offerings for the newly launched Disney+. It’s a series of short films, all only three or four minutes in length, where the character Forky literally asks questions. It’s sweet, it’s clever, and it’s hilarious. Set in the timespan between the end of the film, where Forky accepts his life as one of Bonnie’s toys, and the end-credits scene where he meets Knifey, Forky Asks a Question follows the trash-turned-toy on his journey to enlightenment. And it gives him a new quotable catchphrase: “I DON’T KNOW!”

The idea for the series came from Pixar writer, director, and voice performer Bob Peterson and Toy Story 4 producer Mark Nielsen. Nielsen said that since Peterson (the writer and co-director of Up, among a slew of other Pixar pictures) wasn’t a part of Toy Story 4, they got him in “the Forky zone” by putting him in the booth with Tony Hale. “Bob sat in and just immersed himself in the greatness and the joy of Forky for a day,” Nielsen said.

“I could see that Forky was going to be this great breakout character,” Peterson told Decider, explaining that he pitched the series to Pixar specifically for Disney+ last fall. “I decided to make it a little bit of a different kind of interview show, highlighting Forky’s lunacy, but paired with an individual from Toy Story 4, a side character you may not have heard from a lot. So I just made a list of all the characters and I looked through and thought, ‘Who would it be fun to pair Forky with?’ And based on that, knowing who that side character was, I then crafted what a great question would be for that.”

That’s how Hamm the Piggy Bank inspired “What is Money?,” Dolly the little leader of the toys got paired with the upcoming, “What is a Leader?,” and why Forky got to ask a quartet of all-star comedy legends about the meaning of love.

In today’s all-new episode of Forky Asks a Question, “What is Love?,” Melephant Brooks (Mel Brooks), Carl Reineroceros (Carl Reiner), Chairol Burnett (Carol Burnett), and Bitey White (Betty White) try to explain the concept of love to Forky, all while getting caught up in their own hilariously soap-y love quadrangle. Specifically inspired by the work of Burnett, Peterson said he wanted the short to feel like “a slightly melodramatic Carol Burnett sketch where they’re parodying a soap opera.”

The result is a glorious mix of “Forky’s lunacy” and some stellar voice performances from four of the greatest comedic actors of all time. Pixar is known for filming its actors’ audio recordings to help capture their expressions in the animation, but here, it looks like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Carol Burnett, and Betty White are almost improvising their lines. While Peterson admitted some actors like to ad-lib, like Albert Brooks on Finding Nemo, Forky‘s tight production schedule meant they were “script bound.”

“Literally, I had half an hour with each person so we tended to stick to the script as we went,” Peterson said, while noting there were occasional opportunities for more improvisation. “I wanted to somehow get the Carol Burnett Tarzan yell, which she always did in her shows, and so basically, that was open-ended. When we got to that part in the script, I said, ‘Okay, your character’s going to warm up your voice in a funny way,’ and she went to town for like five minutes. It was hilarious.”

Nielsen said, “Of all the group, probably Forky, Tony Hale, was bringing the most different takes on lines. We had two full days just to record him because he has so many lines in all ten of these shorts. He’s great at coming back with alternative ideas and testing things live in the room.”

“Like in the opening, we have that kind of wall of sound of questions. We got what we needed and then we unleashed him on anything he could think of to ask and we ended up using that at the beginning,” Peterson said.

Tony Hale isn’t the only actor who speaks in Forky Asks a Question‘s hilarious opening credits. After a sonic avalanche of Forky asking his befuddled questions, a gruff, deep, “Noo Yawk” accent announces the name of the series. That voice is Bob Peterson’s.

“That one is kind of a nod to my dad, who kept his New York accent. You call my dad and you’ll hear [in accent]: ‘Leave a message for Bob Peterson,’ and so I’ve always done that voice,” Peterson said. “It also just points to the lunacy to come. It has no reason to be in there, but it just ends up being this funny first mention of the series, and you know that maybe this is going to be a little bit…off.”

Things were also a little bit “off” behind-the-scenes. Forky Asks a Question marked a shift in how Peterson, Nielsen, and their crew typically works at Pixar. They only had a year to make all ten episodes in time for Disney+’s launch and a much smaller crew. (Think around fifty people versus the 250 who worked for five years on Toy Story 4.) That posed challenges and offered new opportunities.

“[Disney+] is a new way to put forward Pixar entertainment,” Peterson said. “So we’re learning as we go, and we’re learning how to be efficient because it is a different way to go. It’s not a four year marathon run, it’s more of a sprint where you’re doing a lot of things fast.”

Nielsen said that working fast and with a small crew had some unexpected perks. “It created this kind of bond between the crew that isn’t possible on a big crew, or a feature. So there was a lot of camaraderie. And on these short projects, people get to own more because there’s fewer of you, everyone gets to do a little bit more than they do on a feature.”

The other major perk? How easy Disney+ makes it to connect their loved ones to their work. Nielsen said, “I personally loved that I can reach out to anyone in my friends and family and just let them know that these films are on there and right that second, they can drop what they’re doing and watch them if they haven’t had a chance to see them. The accessibility of these shorts is pretty awesome.”

However, not everything Pixar has made is accessible on Disney+ as of yet. Disney+ launched with Forky Asks a Question, but not its cinematic predecessor, Toy Story 4. That means there could be viewers who meet Forky in these shorts before they see his origin story.

Peterson said, “My preference would be that they see his backstory to see how he was created and all of that, but if they do start with the Forky shorts, I think they can identify with his character and will be entertained.”

“You know, I think even though it’s a little out of order to see him in his fully formed self before seeing him be created, I think it could still work,” Nielsen said. “I think these could definitely be an entrée into Forky and hopefully it would inspire kids who hadn’t seen the feature, if they saw the shorts first, to want to know more about Forky and how he was made.”

There are already five episodes of Forky Asks a Question on Disney+. Each is separated under its own title page like a short film, and each debuted on their own via Disney+’s weekly episodic rollout plan. Peterson admitted he was curious about how this rollout strategy would affect the audience reaction.

“It’s funny, we watch these things [at Pixar] as a group, mostly. Like the first five, we watched together, and the second five, we watched together. And they sort of build on each other. And when they’re split up, I didn’t know how I’d feel about that because they are fairly brief, but it’s fun. It’s fun to look forward to the next one,” Peterson said.

Nielsen loved the anticipation built by this rollout strategy. “Just watching my own family — I’ve got four kids — and they’re really excited about the one-a-week rollout that’s been happening on Disney+. And they’ve been talking about which one’s coming next, and getting ready for them. And one of the first things they do on Friday — so far it seems like that’s the day they’ve come out — is they go on there in the morning and try to see it before each other. And so I think it’s kind of cool. It just keeps the anticipation and builds the excitement to have something to look forward to all the way until mid-January for this series,” Nielsen said.

There are in total ten episodes of Forky Asks a Question slated to hit Disney+ between now and mid-January. However, that’s not to say there couldn’t be more of them. When Decider asked Peterson and Nielsen if Forky could return, they joked.

“He knows everything he needs to know now,” Peterson said sarcastically.

Nielsen added, “He only had 10 questions!”

“He graduates at the end,” Peterson joked, before saying, “You know you never know. It seems like something that could go on. Right now, we’re not really pondering that. We had so much fun doing these. You know, I’d be fine if they did keep going.”

“Yeah, no I agree,” Nielsen said. “There’s no plans in the works, but I love Forky so much, and there’s so much more he could try to learn and there are so many questions left in the world to have. I certainly think that there’s room for more questions.”

Peterson said he also could see a number of other Toy Story 4 characters anchoring their own Disney+ series.

“For me, the funniest side characters of Toy Story 4 were Forky, Duke Caboom, and Ducky and Bunny. Caboom, Ducky and Bunny, they seem like they’d be ripe for something. Of course, there’s no plans for that yet, but it would be fun to see them,” Peterson said.

Right now, all the focus on is Forky.

“It was a real honor for us to be making the first short films for Disney+. There had been so much talk about that service coming, so being able to build something new for it, first thing out, was pretty special,” Nielsen said.

Forky Asks a Question: What is Love? is now streaming on Disney+.

Where to stream Forky Asks a Question