In April of last year, comedy-legend Don Rickles passed away at the age of 90. Besides his famous stand-up work, Rickles was best-known for portraying Mr. Potato Head in the
Toy Story film series. Unfortunately, Rickles passed before he was able to record any dialogue for the upcoming fourth instalment in the beloved animated franchise. Thus, fans were left to wonder how the character could feature in the film, despite Rickles' passing.
Well,
Comicbook.com recently learned from the
Toy Story 4's director that the film will feature a tribute to the late actor and comedian. Josh Cooley explained that the film will indeed feature Don Rickles' voice as Mr. Potato Head.
"Yes we're gonna have a tribute to him." In effort to preserve his voice, the team at Pixar Animation Studios opted to reuse audio that Rickles had recorded for video-games, shorts, and the like.
We, you know we went through everything that could possibly, he's recorded so we went through all the past films, all the shorts, all the video games, all the theme park stuff, all the ice- capades all the toys. He's done a lot over the past 25 years. And you know he did sign on to be on this film before he passed and so we're very honored for that and we're also very honored that his family asked us to see if can create a performance.
So obviously we can't say anything that's specific to the plot but we found enough that felt natural and he fits in just like everybody else does.
Mark Neilsen, the film's producer, explained that without Rickles there would be no Mr. Potato Head and that the studio was determined to not use a sound-alike for the role. "We couldn't imagine this film with a sound alike. We knew, we knew we had to just dig and do whatever we could to try to preserve his voice and as, I mean he is so, he is the voice of Potato Head. You see that toy on the shelf, you hear that voice coming at ya."
Toy Story 4 will be releasing in theatres on June 21st, 2019.