Inside Out 2 Director Reveals Original 'Anxiety' Design And It's Completely Different

3 July 2024, 14:53

By Sam Prance

Anxiety went through multiple changes before Pixar settled on the final design.

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Inside Out 2 director Kelsey Mann has unveiled the original designs for Anxiety and the character had a VERY different look.

Just like Inside Out, Inside Out 2 follows Riley on a journey as she tries to manager her emotions. However, this time Riley is 13 and there are brand new emotions to explore. Joining original emotions Joy, Sadness, Anger, Digust and Fear are Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui and Anxiety. Each new emotion comes with its own distinctive colour, look and characteristics.

Voiced by Stranger Things star Maya Hawke, Anxiety is orange and adorable but they almost looked completely different.

Read more: Here's Why Mindy Kaling's Disgust And Bill Hader's Fear Were Recast In Inside Out 2

Watch the Inside Out 2 trailer

In a new behind the scenes featurette for IGN, Kelsey Mann shows fans some of the original designs for the movie. Instead of being a cute orange character, Anxiety was initially supposed to look like Godzilla and they grew bigger and bigger the worse Riley's Anxiety got.

Speaking about the final Anxiety design that we all know and love, Kelsey explained: "I love this design [but] it took a long time to get here. There are lots of iterations that led up to this design."

Pointing at the original dinosaur like version, Kelsey then said: 'She shows up small, but the more you fight it, the worse it gets. I was like, ‘what if she actually grows?'"

Kelsey added: "And then [in] my epilogue version, when [Riley] realises how to manage it, it actually shrinks down to the proper size, and is super cute."

Kelsey also revealed that there was another option in which Anxiety was "pretending to be someone else". He stated: "She showed up as this character named ‘Tia’, and her business card said ‘transitional integration advisor’. That was her name, and she was hiding who she really was, which was Anxiety. So she was kind of like this con artist."

However, they ultimately decided it would be too difficult for young audiences to understand. Kesley said: "It was fun but it was kind of confusing. We were like, ‘why doesn’t she just show up as Anxiety’, we didn’t need that twist."

What do you think? Did they choose the right design?