The Office alum Phyllis Smith delivers a breakout performance as Sadness in Pixar’s new movie. She’ll break your heart in the best way possible.
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Some of the biggest names in comedy — Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, and Rashida Jones — lend their voices to Inside Out, Pixar's 15th cinematic offering about the complex array of emotions fueling 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) as she moves from Minneapolis to San Francisco. But, in the end, it's The Office alum Phyllis Smith who runs away with the film, bringing an overwhelming amount of heart, pain, and power to her performance as Sadness, the emotion continuously sidelined by Joy (Poehler), Fear (Hader), Disgust (Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black).
"I'd never done voiceover before, so I was extremely nervous," Smith, best known for playing "Bushiest Beaver" Dundie Award winner Phyllis on the NBC comedy, told BuzzFeed News on the phone from her home in St. Louis. "But when Pixar asks you to do anything — regardless of what it is — you know it's going to be a positive thing, so I didn't hesitate when they called."
That all-important call came after Inside Out executive producer Jonas Rivera stumbled upon 2011's Bad Teacher, a raunchy black comedy in which Smith played a put-upon educator who goes through the wringer, courtesy of Cameron Diaz's titular teacher.
"For a long time I didn't know how I came onto their radar," Smith said. "So I finally asked Jonas [and] he said that one late night, he tuned into Bad Teacher on television — it was the scene where Cameron and I were having lunch [and] she kept taking food off my plate. He picked up the phone after that scene, called Pete [Docter, Inside Out's co-writer and co-director], and said, 'I found our Sadness.'"
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As flattering as it was, the faith Rivera and Docter placed in Smith made her feel a bit overwhelmed. "I remember trying to be sad, trying to make my voice sound sad," she recalled of her first day on the movie. "I'm not a method actor, so I didn't sit there and think about horrible things before walking into the room every day to get into that really low place. I just kept looking to the script and reading the lines in an attempt to make it truthful and believable. Fortunately, I don't think any of that session was used, and I'm glad for that."
Docter quickly recognized that Smith was struggling to deliver what landed her the job in the first place and sat her down to regroup. "I think he was very astute and was able to see my hesitations and my insecurities and my lack of confidence, or whatever it was, and we used that in the character of Sadness," Smith said.
With her self-confidence restored, Smith produced a remarkably relatable and endlessly endearing performance in a film she couldn't be prouder of. "Hopefully, when [kids] watch this film, they know it's OK to have tough feelings, it's OK to be sad, it's OK to — in the right balance — feel anger and disgust, but be full of joy too," she said. "I just love the message of the film and to be included in a film that will, hopefully, live on long after I'm gone is pretty amazing."
Doubly amazing because it wasn't too long ago that Smith believed her career as a performer was over.
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