- [Josh] Congratulations on 'Lightyear.'
I'm just thrilled: Finally you have a movie
that people are gonna pay attention to.
It's been a tough road for you.
- Right.
- All these little art films.
This one might actually entertain the masses.
- Yeah, finally, something a little more mainstream.
- [Josh] A lot of kids grow up
dreaming of being the superhero.
But if anything, this sounds
like more of the actual dream come true.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
You were a Disney guy. You wanted to, in fact,
even be an animator at one point.
So is this in some ways even more
of the culmination of the dreams of a child?
- Yeah. This is a really big deal to me.
I mean, it's so funny.
My agents and managers, sometimes when they call,
if everybody's on the call,
that's either really good news,
or really bad news.
And everybody was on the call,
and I said, "What's going on, guys?"
And they said, "Well,
"Pixar wants to talk to you about a movie."
They knew I was such a Pixar nut.
And I said, "Guys, I'm in."
"I don't care what it is, doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter, I'm doing it."
"Did they say anything about the project?"
"The only thing they said was Buzz Lightyear."
I thought, OK.
You know, Tim Allen's Buzz Lightyear.
How does that work?
But I obviously took the meeting,
and [director] Angus [MacLane] gave such a good pitch.
You know, he went up,
and they did a little PowerPoint thing.
And he said, "When I was young
my favorite movie was 'Star Wars.'"
And the first slide was, you know,
6-year-old Angus covered head to toe
in, like, Han Solo gear.
And he said, you know, "I had all the toys,
"and I loved the movies,
"and my friends and I were obsessed."
And when he saw the first 'Toy Story' movie,
and Andy got Buzz Lightyear,
and all of his friends knew who Buzz was,
and all of his friends were so excited to get that toy,
he wanted to know what was the movie that Andy
and his friends saw that made them so obsessed with the toy.
And I said, "Well, there it is.
"That's the pitch."
You know, that to me at least made sense
as to why the voice might be different.
- [Josh] It's a clever way in,
and I have to say, I mean, I, like you, love all Pixar.
Who doesn't love Pixar?
And sure enough, I think in the first 25 minutes,
I was crying, watching this movie.
- Yeah, it gets you quick.
- Do you well up during Pixar?
What are the ones that have caught you,
that have made you a blubbering mess?
- I mean, it doesn't take much for me.
Pixar does an amazing job.
All the 'Toy Story' movies. Two, three,
and four will rip your heart out.
But 'Inside Out' gets me,
'Up' obviously gets me, 'Coco' got me.
I mean, even in a space action-adventure,
they still manage to get you.
So it's something they do really well,
and they can weave in and out of those emotional pockets
back to the comedy, back to the action with ease.
- [Josh] You've had some lines
that have had a lot of weight to them.
I mean, everybody was waiting
for how you were gonna say, "Avengers, assemble,"
by the end of that.
You kind of, like, understated it.
It worked perfectly.
Which was more pressure-filled,
delivering "Avengers, assemble" or "To infinity and beyond?"
- Well, certainly this one felt a little more intimidating.
'Cause, you know, at least with "Avengers, assemble,"
no one had done it before.
You know, with this one, you feel kind of
like you're wearing someone else's clothes or something.
You know that someone else
has kind of put their stamp on it.
It's an iconic line because someone else made it iconic.
So I was honored to say this line,
I mean, it's a line that meant a lot to me,
and you get goosebumps every time you do it.
But you also understand that this belongs
to someone else and it always will.
So you really wanna make sure you respect that.
- [Josh] I'm just curious
on the "Avengers, assemble" line.
Were there other versions of that?
Because again, you went kind of -
- 'Cause again, you know, it almost feels like
it should be shouted.
And I was gonna shout the first take,
and then it just felt like, you know,
it almost feels like I knew what the camera was doing.
You know that people are waiting for it.
And it almost felt like a nice juxtaposition
to almost, you know, go underneath it,
and then have everyone around me scream.
And we tried that the first take,
and then the Russos just said, "That's it,
"don't even do the screaming one."
And I actually don't know if we ever even tried it,
I mean, I obviously tried it at my home
the night before.
And again, it could have worked. It could have worked,
but I like the fact that it, you know,
you almost have to lean in.
- [Josh] Oh yeah, the entire audience
kind of collectively, just like [gasps].
- I really loved that right when I say it,
[Chris] Hemsworth just lets out that, you know, primal roar.
It almost, it would've been strange if I had screamed,
and everyone screamed. It almost felt better,
kind of being more steely.
- [Josh] You know, I was looking back
to all of our chats over the years,
and I think actually our first chat of all places,
was at Comic-Con in 2010. - Wow.
- [Josh] Like, literally minutes before you went
on stage for Hall H, and it's fascinating to look at.
Look, you've been very open
and honest over the years
about talking about anxiety, et cetera.
And you were even open then, like you were
scared to kind of go out on that stage. - Yeah.
And I'm just curious, like, looking back, looking at that guy,
have you kind of, like, figured out how to
reconcile all this, because you are so talked about,
so at the center of pop culture, at a certain point,
you could have shriveled up,
but you've somehow managed to make it work.
- Like most of our anxiety in life,
it's about these fears of what will happen.
You know, when you're able to still your mind,
and be present in your body, those fears melt away.
Anxiety in general
is predicated on living
outside of the moments, you know,
analyzing the past, and worrying about the future.
So, over 10 years of making these movies,
and being forced to do big-stage sort of things,
you realize that a lot of the fears that you had
never really do come to fruition,
and look even if they do, I've had
some things that haven't always gone the way I wanted to.
When you choose not to dwell on them, to look for them,
to read or absorb them, they do disappear.
You know, you do have the opportunity every day
to construct the reality in front of you,
and that starts with being present
and in your own mind
and understanding how to stop your brain from making noise.
So in a weird way, it's been my classroom.
You know, this acting landscape has kind of forced you
to hone some ability in terms of stilling your mind.
And in turn you realize that a lot of the fear
that breeds anxiety never really happens,
and it's your own making.
- [Josh] I think it's really telling, too,
that like, look at what we're talking about.
We're talking about yet another role that has a lot on it
that could intimidate many people.
And I'm sure was intimidating in some way,
but, like, in some ways chasing it, going after it,
and maybe having a decade of being [Captain America]
lets you kind of go after this and know, like,
you know what, it's gonna be fine.
- Everything is always gonna be fine,
always anyway, always anyway.
I mean, it's so funny.
It's always about the level of perspective
you're looking at it from.
From 10,000 feet up, I mean, shoot,
not to be somehow morbid or cynical,
but eventually even this world will go away.
There is no - this idea of kind of a permanence
to your story is a fallacy.
There's this great idiom or story, proverb,
whatever you wanna call it,
if you took a glass of water
and you put a handful of salt in it,
and took a sip, it would taste terrible.
But if you took that same handful of salt,
and put it in a lake and sip the lake,
you wouldn't taste the salt at all.
The salt is your pain, your fear, your sadness.
Be the lake, you know what I mean?
Depending upon how you're looking at the world,
if you make your world small,
your pain can feel loud and big.
But if you recognize that you are timeless,
and that your thoughts are not you,
and that you're bigger than all of it,
the pain melts away.
- [Josh] On a slightly more trivial note,
last year I spoke to Sebastian [Stan]
and Anthony [Mackie],
and I don't if you remember this.
I want the other side of this, what happened?
I asked them both to text you at the same exact time,
to see who you loved more. - Yeah.
- Now, Mackie claims he got the text back,
about a nanosecond ahead.
What was happening at Chris's house,
when this was going down? - It's true.
All right, so I got both texts immediately,
and I'm gonna be honest.
I'm gonna blow Mackie up right now.
He said in his text, "Don't text Sebastian, text me first."
[Laughs]
- But you know, I mean the truth is I would've texted them
both back instantly.
They're both dear friends of mine.
I love them with all my heart.
So, you know, Mackie knew what he was doing.
- [Josh] Classic Mackie, yeah.
- He did get the text out first,
Seb was right behind him.
So just for the sake of who got it in first,
I had to send it back to Mackie.
- [Josh] Amazing. I know you've been very open about,
look, I mean, you can't top how you went out as Cap,
and it's gonna take the right thing eventually,
maybe, who knows.
But here's my question. - Shoot.
There were a lot of rumors that you could come back
in the multiverse as another Marvel character
you played, Johnny Storm.
Did they ever come to you? - God, wouldn't that be great?
- Would that have intrigued you? - Wouldn't that be great?
- No, no one's ever come to me about that.
I mean, I don't exactly look the same anymore.
That was 15, almost 20 years ago.
Oh my God, I'm old.
But I really love that character,
but I think aren't they doing something now with -
- [Josh] Well, they are, but as you well know,
in the multiverse, all bets,
you can have six different Johnny Storms.
- Yeah, I guess that's true.
I mean, I guess all bets are off.
Yeah. Look, I would love it.
I would love it.
That would actually be an easier sell to me
than coming back as Cap.
You know what I mean?
Cap is so precious to me.
And you know, I almost don't wanna disrupt
what a beautiful experience that was.
But Johnny Storm, I feel
like he didn't really get his day.
That was before Marvel really found its footing.
So I loved that role and, you know, who knows.
- [Josh] Are you happy for your buddy Hayley [Atwell]
as Captain Carter?
Did you see her in multiverse yet?
- Yeah, that's right. No, I haven't seen it yet,
but I heard it.
I mean, she's perfect for it.
I mean, who, she's truly just one of the best actresses
I've ever worked with and just one of the loveliest humans.
So, I couldn't be happier for her.
- [Josh] Back on the 'Lightyear' front, I'm curious,
there are so many weird kind of opportunities
that come around, like, on the press side,
did [Jeff] Bezos ever call and say,
"Hey, do you want to go into space?"
If you had gotten that call,
would you ever have accepted?
- I would've absolutely accepted.
I mean, I am dying to go to space.
I'm a massive massive space nerd.
For me, the idea of space,
the concept of what is out there,
it's overwhelming to me
but it brings me an incredible sense
of peace and perspective.
And you know, in that kind of insignificance,
I find a lot of tranquility.
So for me, going to space would be a dream come true.
- [Josh] Amazing. So you're hitting
all the quadrants of Disney.
Obviously Marvel, got Pixar.
Yeah, what's left, what's next?
- Somehow we have no Star Wars,
and we have no musical, both of which -
- Yeah, why is there no Star Wars?
God, would I love to be in Star Wars.
God, I mean, I would do anything, even
if I was just a Stormtrooper, I'd be thrilled.
- [Josh] You could be the world's tallest Ewok.
You could be anything, like, anything you put your mind to.
- Yeah. I'll take a Wookiee, though.
That's fine.
Just put me, I'll do it.
I'll take it.
- [Josh] Just keep growing the facial hair.
It'll grow out and it'll cover your face.
- Yeah. I would love Star Wars and musicals.
Look, man, I'm dying for those things to happen.
I was supposed to do 'Little Shop of Horrors'
a couple years ago and then, you know,
COVID happened and there were budget issues.
And I think actually I think the director
might have jumped off the project,
but that was a heartbreaker.
That's my favorite musical.
And I - - That's a great one.
- I know, I know.
And I'm - I even thought about posting my audition,
just to stir the pot, just to see,
if I could poke Warner Bros. a little bit,
to see if maybe the first time ever
you could get some fan reactions to let them know,
come on, guys, make this thing.
- [Josh] Oh my god.
- I sang the "Dentist!" song for my audition,
and I got it on my phone.
And I always think, is this crazy to post this?
- [Josh] It's not crazy. Do it.