Tim Allen has revealed that Pixar bosses delivered some blunt feedback when he returned to voice Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story 5, telling him his voice had aged and sending him for vocal retraining with an opera singer before he could reprise the role.
The 72-year-old, who voiced the character across the first four films before being controversially sidelined for the 2022 spin-off Lightyear, told Us Weekly that Pixar delivered the news as gently as possible. “In their nicest way, Pixar said: ‘Buzz sounds a little old these days,'” Allen disclosed, laughing as he recalled the experience. He said he had never previously warmed up his voice before recording sessions but accepted it had become necessary. “I’d never warmed up before, but the longer you do this, you just can’t start off; you have to do warm-ups,” he said.
Toy Story 5, reuniting Allen with Tom Hanks, Joan Cusack and Wallace Shawn, arrives in cinemas next Friday, marking a return to the core franchise after the catastrophic failure of Lightyear, which Deadline estimated lost Disney and Pixar $106 million.
Allen’s exclusion from Lightyear had sparked years of controversy. When the spin-off was announced in 2020 with Captain America star Chris Evans in the lead role instead of Allen, fans erupted, with many speculating the decision was politically motivated given Evans’ outspoken liberal views contrasted with Allen’s conservative politics — Allen attended Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Furious fans flooded social media with messages including “There is no Buzz Lightyear without Tim Allen.”
Evans moved quickly to clarify the casting rationale, explaining on Twitter that the film was not about “Buzz Lightyear the toy” but rather “the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on.” He was consistently generous about Allen’s legacy throughout the promotional campaign. “Look, Tim Allen is Buzz Lightyear,” Evans said on Good Morning America. “What he did in those movies is so iconic and so loved, and I’d be a fool not to incorporate some of his choices into this role.” At the film’s premiere, he told Variety his approach was to develop “his own interpretation while still using Tim Allen as the blueprint,” adding: “The first time you have to do that iconic line — ‘To infinity and beyond’ — you just kind of do a shameless Tim Allen impression, because it’s intimidating.”
The film’s troubles extended beyond casting. A lesbian kiss involving a character voiced by Orange Is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba sparked a prolonged controversy, being removed and then restored amid Disney’s public opposition to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, backed by Governor Ron DeSantis, which restricted classroom discussion of sexuality and gender identity for younger pupils.
Allen kept his distance from the project entirely as it unravelled at the box office. “I stayed out of it,” he told Extra, explaining the film had “nothing to do” with his character. “It’s a wonderful story. It just doesn’t seem to have any connection to the toy, and it’s a little… I don’t know.”
The original Toy Story, released in 1995 with Hanks as Woody and Allen as Buzz, was the first entirely computer-animated feature film and a landmark moment for Pixar, spawning sequels in 1999, 2010 and 2019 — all featuring the same two leads — before this summer’s fifth instalment marks their full reunion.
