‘Toy Story 5’ introduces Blaze, a horse-loving Black and Armenian character, as Jessie takes center stage
TheGrio...
The beloved franchise is expanding its world with Blaze, a horse-loving mixed-race girl whose arrival helps reshape the future of playtime.
For more than 30 years, the world of “Toy Story” has revolved around a simple question: What happens when a child grows up?
In Disney and Pixar’s upcoming “Toy Story 5,” that question gets a modern update.
During an exclusive early preview event at Disneyland attended by theGrio, filmmakers revealed that the latest installment introduces Blaze, a new mixed-race character voiced by actress Mykal-Michelle Harris, alongside her Black mother, voiced by “Paradise” actress Krys Marshall. The film also marks a significant shift for the franchise, moving away from Andy and placing Bonnie (and Jessie) at the center of a story exploring what childhood looks like in an era dominated by screens.
The first 45 minutes screened for press showcase Jessie in her role as the leader of Bonnie’s toy room, navigating a new challenge when a tablet named Lily Pad arrives and quickly captures Bonnie’s attention. Another one of the film’s most exciting additions is Blaze, a confident, animal-loving 9-year-old who lives on a ranch outside town. During an interview with theGrio, co-director Kenna Harris discussed Blaze’s origins.
“Bonnie is dealing with some loneliness and wants to connect with others in the film, so the first idea was just like, who is an aspirational character that we’ll just be like, ‘Yes, Bonnie, go be her friend,’” Harris said.
The character quickly became a favorite inside Pixar.
“Matt Nolte, one of our character designers, came up with this lovely design of Blaze. She’s Black, she’s half Armenian. She has this gorgeous curly hair,” Harris told theGrio. “Immediately, we were just off to the races with the tech, because that kind of hair texture was a little bit new to the Pixar studio, but luckily we had a lovely culture trust of Black colleagues at the studio who were keeping us honest and making sure that Blaze looked as fantastic as she could. She’s one of my favorite characters now. She’s so awesome.”
Producer Lindsey Collins said Blaze’s impact was immediately apparent during audience testing.
“She’s actually everybody’s favorite,” Collins said. “We previewed it with audiences. She was like number two. It was Jessie and then Blaze as the favorite character. It was parents who were like, ‘I just want my kid to have a friend like Blaze.’”
Bringing Blaze to life required Pixar to develop new animation technology capable of accurately depicting tightly coiled hair.
According to visual effects supervisor Thomas Jordan, the character represents a milestone not only for the film but for the studio.
“Blaze was our very first character to have it,” Jordan told theGrio. “But that means all future Pixar films will have access to this. So it’s our hope that we can represent everyone now.”
Jordan also spoke about the culture trust Harris mentioned, saying the team consulted a group of Pixar employees with similar hair textures throughout production and even created a second hairstyle for scenes showing Blaze waking up in the morning after sleeping in a bonnet.
“It took me on a journey of learning what other people have to do to care for their hair,” he said.
While Blaze represents a major expansion of the franchise’s cultural landscape, “Toy Story 5” is equally focused on the realities facing today’s children.
The central conflict revolves around Lily Pad, a frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee, who believes she knows what’s best for Bonnie.
“Bonnie is special in a way that she hasn’t been affected by devices until the movie happens. She’s an inventive player, a creative character. She made Forky in the last movie. So she works with her hands,” production designer Bob Pauley told theGrio.
“This toy comes into her world for good purposes,” Pauley continued. “Her parents got the toy to make friends, but it’s kind of like when Buzz shows up in ‘Toy Story,’ and Woody was the big toy there. But in this case, it’s so foreign to all our toys. It’s like an alien landing. Bonnie’s a screen vampire, just stuck on this thing, and you can see where the toys are really worried. But Lily is trying to do her best, from her point of view, to help Bonnie. So it gets complicated.”
The filmmakers were careful not to turn the story into a simplistic anti-technology argument.
“We wanted it to feel real,” Harris said during a filmmaker Q&A. “Not squeaky-clean.”
Instead, the film explores how technology affects children’s ability to connect with one another.
“We realized that there comes an age, usually about seven or eight, where you start to branch out socially,” Stanton said. “That becomes the more important area of development.
The filmmakers also saw the story as an opportunity to elevate Jessie into a leading role.
“It’s about time,” Stanton said in the production notes for the film.
For Harris, shifting the perspective from Andy and Woody to Bonnie and Jessie opened entirely new storytelling possibilities.
“The first few movies you get to explore with Andy, but Andy is one type of kid,” Harris told theGrio. “With Bonnie and Jessie, you get to show how messy girls are, how imaginative, how limitless. It’s not limiting the fact that we have two girls being focused on. It’s in fact freeing and just a breath of fresh air.”
That freedom is reflected in the film’s visual world as well. Bob Pauley described Blaze’s ranch as a warm, nostalgic counterpoint to Bonnie’s increasingly tech-driven environment.
When asked about introducing a Black and Armenian family into the franchise, Pauley said the goal was to create something authentic and familiar.
“It’s a family that you see everywhere,” he told theGrio. “It’s a familiar family that’s not exactly the way you think it would be, but it’s nuanced. When we started looking at that, we thought, well, they’re moved into this old farmhouse, and they remodeled, so it’s got some upgrades. Hopefully, there are some things you recognize in there that tell a little bit of a backstory. We tried to do research and get help on supporting that. That was really fun, and she’s just a kick.”
“It’s always a challenge to come up with new characters that resonate with everybody,” Pauley added. “But we also want to look wide and make sure we represent. So I think, hopefully, we’re doing it on this.”
The addition of Blaze is especially timely because her love of horses and ranch life arrives at a moment when audiences are increasingly rediscovering the history of Black cowboys, whose contributions to the American West were often overlooked for generations.
Whether intentional or not, Blaze expands a world that has long been associated with cowboys and frontier mythology, creating space for more children to see themselves reflected in it.
In a franchise built on the idea that every toy deserves to matter, that evolution feels fitting.
“Toy Story 5” arrives in theaters June 19.