Tim Allen isn’t afraid to admit that he had some seriously mixed emotions when it came to Buzz Lightyear and Jessie’s Toy Story 5 story line.
Warning: Spoilers below for the end of Toy Story 5.
After a long and arduous battle of trying to maintain their relevance against a tablet named Lilypad, Toy Story 5 sees Buzz (Allen) confessing his true feelings for cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) in the film’s final moments. When he stumbles on his words, Jessie interrupts him with a kiss, leaving Buzz — and Allen — totally thrown.
“[It was] creepy!” Allen, 73, exclusively confessed to Us Weekly about the smooch between the two characters, noting that he channels his inner child while recording Buzz. “When I’m doing [Toy Story], I’m literally an 8-year-old kid. That’s what the personality I feel is inside Buzz, is my 11-year-old. So it’s like, ‘Oh God, oh no, I’m doing that?!”
According to Allen, the feeling was akin to watching a romance scene in the same room as his daughters. While his youngest is 17 and starting to navigate romantic relationships — “That’s all they talk about at school,” he quipped — there’s still an awkwardness around intimate moments when his children are present. (Allen is dad to two daughters: Kate, 36, whom he shares with ex-wife Laura Deibel, and Elizabeth, 17, whom he shares with wife Jane Hajduk.)
“Every time there’s a kissing scene, everybody gets really quiet in the room,” he told Us. “Especially when [Elizabeth was] a little younger. And that is exactly how I responded [to Buzz kissing Jessie]. I remember when I first read it, I said, ‘Are you going to show this?’ It’s like Woody’s bald spot. You kind of move them out of the animated thing, and it gets into some larger dramatic questions. Can they get married? And let’s move on from there.”
Buzz and Jessie do end up tying the knot — sort of — as their owner, Bonnie, has a pretend wedding for the toys to say “I do.” After seeing the bigger picture, Allen realized that the varying emotions toward Buzz and Jessie’s love for one another are exactly what made the scenes so special.
“I loved [it] because it affects everybody in the room,” he explained. “You know, adults, and then kids go, ‘Eew!’ You got that potpourri of responses.”
Allen is no stranger to speaking up when it comes to his characters. He previously joked to Pixar after the release of Toy Story 4 that Buzz should be more relevant to the story, only to find that the writers paid attention to his request.
“I was just kidding around, but it was very startling when I saw the storyboards,” he shared. “I said, ‘OK, so you took it seriously, that’s interesting!’ That was funny.”
The Santa Clause star has been similarly vocal on the set of his hit sitcom Shifting Gears, particularly when it came to his character Matt, a widow, entering the dating scene.
“Our showrunner [Michelle Nader] put this thing together and they really like the romance. I wanted a car show about a widower to deal with grief. That’s what I wanted,” Allen told Us. “I loved Kat Dennings [as my daughter] because she’s the perfect choice. That old dynamic is really where I was at.”
Matt does eventually find love on the show after meeting Eve (Jenna Elfman), a dance teacher working across the street from Matt’s car shop. While the duo start off as enemies, their sparring matches eventually turn into romantic sparks.
“She’s so fun to be around and it’s brought out a whole different part of that show and brought a different audience to that show,” Allen admitted. “I’m really out there for the car guys and I make sure the car stuff is fun and exciting. Then the office is cool and now you’ve got romance for the people that want that. Because it turns out the flirting and the actual activity between these two characters is working and I said, ‘All right, I’ll go there.’ [Jenna is] really good at this and the romance is kind of generated quite by accident.”
More than 30 years after first suiting up as Buzz Lightyear, Tim Allen is still finding new adventures. This summer, the actor returns as the beloved Space Ranger in Toy Story 5, the latest chapter in a franchise that has become a touchstone for generations of families. Looking back, Allen is struck by the enduring […]
While Allen eventually found an appreciation for Matt and Eve’s relationship, that didn’t stop him from sharing his worries about how their age gap would read on screen.
“It gets creepy for me at a certain age [and] we’re right at that border,” Allen, who is 19 years Elfman’s senior, explained. “If Jenna didn’t look so damn nice than our age gap is not that much. I just let my hair go natural and she just looks — especially on camera — quite young.”
“They say when you’re lit better and I go, ‘When I’m lit better, I look probably 68,’” he added with a laugh. “I just don’t want to be creepy about it — and that’s kind of the borderline image these days.”
Toy Story 5 is in theaters now.
