Don Rickles seemed the perfect casting as Mr. Potato Head when he voiced the character so memorably in the first three Toy Story movies. But the actor’s passing in 2017 left questions about how our beloved spud would be portrayed in Toy Story 4. Director Josh Cooley confirmed on Twitter that Rickles voice would be used saying, “All of his pieces may be replaceable, but his voice is not. Honored he signed on for TS4, honored he’s in TS4.”
Rickles had supposedly not yet done any voice work for the new film, and the story for Toy Story 4 has been redone since his death. One speculation is that with the large cast for the new movie, Mr. Potato Head might have a smaller role in the film. Previously recorded material was used to give posthumous Rickles dialog for Mr. Potato Head. As Cooley told Entertainment Weekly, “Of course we loved Don obviously, and after he passed, his family contacted us and asked if there was any way that we could create a performance using the recordings that we had.”
So material from the first three films as well as many other sources was used to craft a final performance.
