Riley’s handsome father was the most difficult character for the animators to get right in Inside Out 2
Pixars Inside out has left a double legacy in the animation world. Some people consider it a moving film about the necessity of grief, which turned abstract psychological theories into whimsical set pieces and a resonant storyline. But a certain subsection of the internet decided that Riley’s father (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan) is actually a hot daddy.
The 2017 Buzzfeed piece “It’s finally time we talk about the hot dad from ‘Inside Out’” (subtitled “A Pixar DILF”) has sparked this conversation that… never really stopped since then. There are tweets, fan editsAnd thirst-quenching poles In abundance. (Warning: That last one is as NSFW as you can get with a fully clothed person.) Every now and then, people rediscover how much they long for the father of Inside out. (Sidebar: His first name is Bill, in case you were wondering.)
With a new one Inside out movie on the way, now is the perfect time to commemorate this particular internet crush, and ponder whether it will win new hearts Inside out 2. During a recent press trip to Pixar, I had the chance to tell production designer Jason Deamer about the internet’s love for Riley’s handsome dad.
“Well, we can’t let them down,” he laughed.
Image: Disney/Pixar
Coincidentally, Riley’s father gave the team the most trouble among the human characters when they translated elements from the original 2015 film into the latest version of Pixar’s animation system. It’s been almost a decade since the first film, which means almost a decade of software updates, so reusing the same assets wasn’t an option and the filmmakers had to start from scratch. The character designers had no trouble recreating Riley and her mother, but Bill Andersen’s 2024 version was missing a certain element. je ne sais quoi.
“He was strangely difficult to do,” Deamer says. “We have his actual facial geometry… and it didn’t look like him! All we ended up doing was taking his eyes and doing it That (makes a gesture that indicates the character’s eyebrows furrow and push them a little further forward). I swear to God. And then it was like Oh, there he is!”
The new Inside out The film takes place a few years after the first, as Riley turns 13 and experiences the full emotional whirlwind of being a teenager. New emotions including Fear (Maya Hawke) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri) take over Riley’s emotional headquarters, sending Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and the others into a tailspin. And because puberty waits for no one, this all happens when Riley goes to a prestigious hockey camp that could make or break her next four years of high school – or so Anxiety would have her think.
Because Riley’s handsome dad isn’t, in fact, the main character of Inside out, we probably won’t see much of him in the new film. But the good news is that what we do see of him will be accurate to his original internet-declared hotness, but taken to a new level of high definition.
Riley’s handsome father, as well as Joy, Sadness and the other characters return to theaters Inside out 2 on June 14. We’ll find out more about our Pixar “set visit” as we get closer to release.