He’s got a friend in him. Tom Hanks revealed that his longtime Toy Story costar Tim Allen gave him a heads up about the upcoming Toy Story 4’s “emotional” ending before he even read the script.
“This is the end of the series, and I had gotten some texts from Tim Allen, who plays Buzz Lightyear ‘the astronaut,’” the actor, 62, explained during his Wednesday, May 22, appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “These texts would say, ‘Have you recorded yet? Have you been in? Have you had a session yet?’ And I said, ‘No, not yet.’ ‘You haven’t seen those last pages?’ ‘No, I haven’t seen them.’ ‘Wait till you see those last pages. Tough one, tough one.’”
Hanks noted that he turned his back to the “punks” in the recording studio because he was “self-conscious” while recording his final lines. “We were saying goodbye to Woody and Buzz and Bonnie’s room and Andy and everybody, and it was emotional,” he recalled.
When host Ellen DeGeneres mentioned her sadness over the franchise’s conclusion, the Oscar winner clarified, “Is it over? I don’t know. It’ll live forever.” He also called the Pixar film series “the most rewarding thing I could imagine being a part of.”
Hanks and Allen, 65, starred as Woody and Buzz, respectively, in 1995’s Toy Story, 1999’s Toy Story 2 and 2010’s Toy Story 3. They will return to the beloved characters once more in Toy Story 4, which will be released in June.
The Last Man Standing actor opened up to Us Weekly exclusively about the apparent swan song. “[There is] a very short scene that both Hanks and I had trouble with because I thought there was more pages. It ends and I got choked up,” he revealed. “I literally had a hard time saying it. He did too. We both had the same reaction. Personally, I was like, this is weird — 25 or so years of friendship between Woody and Buzz has morphed into a very close friendship with Hanks and I. It’s just peculiar as life imitates art.”
The Forrest Gump star shared a sweet message in January after he completed his work on the new movie. “Final line, final session as Woody of Toy Story 4,” he captioned an Instagram photo of himself in the voiceover booth. “We rode like the wind, to infinity and beyond.”
Allen posted a similar sentiment at the time. “Finished my Buzz for Toy Story 4 today and it got emotional,” he tweeted. “Wonderful full body story. You are all going to love the work this incredible team at Pixar created. We are all going to love this story….man its [sic] got everything.”
Toy Story 4 will be out in theaters on Friday, June 21.
With reporting by Emily Longeretta
