Guilt, Jealousy and Shame were all cut as characters – the latter because it made the film “really dark”.
In Inside Out 2, the familiar characters from the first film are joined by a whole host of new emotions – with Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy and Ennui all being introduced as key characters as protagonist Riley enters her teenage years.
And it turns out that those were just a few of several new characters that were considered during development on the sequel, with as many as 27 different emotions discussed by director Kelsey Mann and his creative team.
“I remember writing them all down and everything I could think of went to that list,” he explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. “Also just any free associations, you know – like Ennui wasn’t necessarily on that list that we’ve got, although boredom is on there, so I guess you can categorise that.
“But I wrote down all these ideas. And we tried a lot, actually. There was a few that we even tried…. for a while, Guilt was in the movie, Jealousy was in the movie, too. And Shame was a big part of it, too.”
He added: “It’s all about, like, are they right for telling this story? Are there too many? Because the main one was always Anxiety. And I wanted other ones to show up, too. But they had to not trump it or not have to like take over the film, or distract so much – they need to help support tell her story and what she’s going through.”
Meanwhile, Pixar’s creative chief Pete Docter – who directed the first Inside Out film – said the process of choosing which emotions to include in the final film was something of a “puzzle”.
He explained: “Like you look back, and we didn’t fully understand what these characters did. I mean, we read… we did all our research, but then how they interact with the above story. The Riley story and the inside story have to connect and affect each other.”
Mann added that the decision not to include Shame as a character in the movie was rooted in the fact that he felt like doing so might make the film a little too dark – which was not something he was looking for in the family-friendly film.
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“The feeling of shame… It’s still in the movie, but it’s done not through a character, you know,” he said. “That thought of not being good enough, that’s really a lot of what shame deals with. So that’s still in the movie, but it’s not represented in this character.
“Because when we tried it, we’re like, this is really dark. And this is way too far. Like, yeah, I want this film to be meaningful to people. But I also want at the end of the day for people to want to watch it again.
“Because those are my favourite movies, the ones that you can see and you’re like, that’s wonderful. You want to see it again, like ‘Yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s get back in line.’ That’s the kind of movie I wanted to make.”
Inside Out 2 is released in UK cinemas on Friday 14th June.
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