“I’m still that 25-year-old needy actor,” insists two-time Emmy winner Tony Hale. “Once there’s an opportunity, it’s like: Really? Me? Seriously?”
Hale’s latest chance to get in front of audiences comes this weekend in Toy Story 5, playing Forky, Pixar’s closest approximation to Kierkegaard, a philosopher-utensil that is simultaneously horrified and delighted by the realities of his own free will.
Forky’s introduction came in Toy Story 4, starting life as a plastic spork who was then fashioned into a toy thanks to some artful placement of pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks by Buzz and Woody’s current kid, Bonnie. Having started life as single-use plastic, he is convinced his rightful place is in the trash until persuaded by Woody that he is meant for a different destiny.
Forky comes with the kind of interior life that could power even the haughtiest of awards season performances, but he just so happens to be a supporting character in Pixar’s foundational franchise. Fits of existential crises aren’t often combined with animated children’s comedy, but who better to walk that precarious tightrope than Hale, the man who has spent decades spinning angst and anxiety into straight comedy.
Forky has shades of Buster Bluth, the socially inept youngest sibling in Arrested Development, and Gary Walsh, the always available aide in VEEP, who brings co-dependence to dizzying new heights. (The latter role earned Hale both his Emmys.)
