Step Inside Toy Story 5 With Shelby Rabara & Mykal-Michelle Harris

Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 voice actors Shelby Rabara and Mykal-Michelle Harris introduce the characters they bring to life and talk about joining the franchise

A toy camera with a memory card full of history. A kid who turns playtime into an adventure. Snappy, voiced by Shelby Rabara, and Blaze, voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris, are two of the fresh faces joining Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5.

Explore Disney+’s creative producer, Aaron Barksdale, caught up with both actors about the day they found out they’d landed their roles, the excitement of joining the franchise, and why toys still matter when screens are everywhere. From Disney and Pixar, Toy Story 5 makes its streaming debut on Disney+ on September 23.

This interview has been adapted for this article.

Add Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 to Watchlist

Meet The New Characters & Voice Actors In Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5

The toy box has had an upgrade, with new personalities joining Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, and the gang.

Blaze voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris

Blaze is the 9-and-a-half-year-old at the center of Snappy’s memories. She’s independent and tech-savvy, but still makes time for her toys.

Blaze lives on a ranch with her horse, Daffodil, and Jimmy Dean, the family pig who’s one of Harris’ favorite characters in the film. Blaze keeps model horses on display, giving her room an extra stamp of personality.

Snappy voiced by Shelby Rabara

Snappy is a peppy toy digital camera and eager problem-solver who has spent years tucked away in a drawer, still holding onto cherished memories of Blaze. Rabara describes her as a digital camera from the 2000s, placing Snappy between nostalgia and new tech.

More New Characters In Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5

Craig Robinson voices Atlas, a cheerful hippo GPS that needs new batteries, while Conan O’Brien voices the toilet-training tech toy Smarty Pants. Together with Snappy, they make up the “Double A Team.”

Over in Bonnie’s room, Greta Lee voices Lilypad, a frog-shaped smart tablet whose modern ideas about helping Bonnie turn playtime upside down.

Shelby Rabara & Mykal-Michelle Harris Talk Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5

For both actors, landing a role in the Toy Story franchise made an ordinary day go off-script, in a good way.

Joining The Toy Story Family

For Harris, the news came while she was tying her shoes on the stairs, getting ready for a walk with her family. Her mother’s phone rang with a ringtone reserved for Harris’s manager. 

“My mom gets a phone call...And she tells me that I’m going to be in Toy Story 5.”

Her mother’s screams of joy gave away that this was no routine update. Harris was at D23 when the movie was announced, so she saw just how excited fans were. The news was, in her words, “an out of body, surreal experience.”

Rabara’s surprise came in a PDF. There was no dramatic call to prepare her.

“I just opened up this PDF and saw the Pixar header…It was a pinch me moment.”

Inside was the offer to play Snappy. Rabara was shocked, then overjoyed. She calls it a dream come true.

By the Toy Story 5 world premiere, both actors had gone from fans of the franchise to part of its cast. 

Shelby Rabara On Snappy, Toys & Tech

When asked to describe Snappy in three words, Rabara chose “nostalgic,” “encouraging,” and “excitable.” To find the character’s voice, she thought about how cameras preserve happy moments and difficult ones, imagining Snappy as the keeper of a beloved family archive.

“I wanted to bring out the joy in what digital cameras do in creating memories for families and people.”

Snappy’s role as an outdated camera also puts her in a funny middle ground. Once cutting-edge technology, she’s now an old-school toy, while the shiny new screens around her operate differently. 

“Although Snappy is a digital camera, she’s still considered tech...She’s not a bad guy, even though she’s an old-school tech toy.”

Despite being retro, Rabara never plays Snappy as outdated. Her main gift is encouragement, especially when the group needs a lift. “She is just pure joy.”

The same balance has spilled into Rabara’s home. Her seven-year-old daughter plays with a Snappy camera alongside classic Toy Story figures, building her own worlds while the camera records the fun. As Rabara puts it, “Make-believe is where my daughter creates all these worlds by herself from her own imagination.”

Recording offered its own burst of play. Rabara’s favorite session included Craig Robinson, the voice of Atlas. She remembers, “I started beatboxing...Craig gets involved and we just started jamming and [improvising] off each other.”

Apparently even a GPS hippo can find a beat.

Mykal-Michelle Harris On Blaze & Imagination

Harris describes Blaze as “spunky” and “brave,” but her kindness matters most. She says Blaze “isn’t afraid to be herself” and is “very empathetic towards our main characters.”

Blaze’s sunny outlook made the character easy for Harris to connect with. “She always wants to make friends,” Harris says. “She always [sees] the bright side of people.”

Her empathy is also important in a movie packed with questions about children and technology. Harris knows the screen-time conversation can get heated, but she resists turning Blaze into a lecture.

“Not that technology is a bad thing, but showing the balance of technology and toys through Blaze’s [story] is really, really powerful.”

Harris wants viewers to recognize the power of a child’s inner world. Blaze may be tech-savvy, but screens don’t do the dreaming for her. She calls Blaze “extremely important” because the character can “show how amazing kids’ imaginations can be and how powerful kids’ emotions can be.”

What Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 Adds To The Franchise

The toys have weathered moving day and growing up. This time the big disruption fits in Bonnie’s hands. It’s also fun to see Woody and Buzz Lightyear back together after they parted ways in Toy Story 4.

Lilypad’s arrival in Bonnie’s room shakes up the old rules. Now the toys are competing with a device that can entertain a child and offer social connection. The filmmakers have described the conflict as more complicated than a good-versus-evil showdown, because technology isn’t going away, it’s a part of our everyday lives.

Rabara sees the complexity at her own house, where a digital camera is often part of make-believe games. Harris reaches a similar point through the staying power of the franchise. “Toys will never stop being a part of childhood,” she says.

Rabara sees that bond working across generations in her own family: “When I was a kid, I watched [the first] Toy Story [movie] with my mom and now she gets to watch it with her granddaughter, so it’s this cross-generational experience.”

Childhood changes, but our instinct to share stories with the people we love is not going away.