Tom Hanks Reveals ‘Toy Story 4’ Has Such an Emotional Ending He Couldn’t Face the Crew

Tom Hanks says the ending to Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story 4 was so emotional he pretended to be invisible while recording his lines.

“It was the first time that we were going to be recording the end of the movie, and Toy Story [4] is going to have an impactful ending,” Hanks said on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show (via Express).

“The way you record Toy Story, you’re in a room with the team that has created it. When I went in for my last day of recording, I wanted to have my back to them, because usually you’re facing him so he can look right up and you can talk about it.”

But because it proved too overwhelming, Hanks said, “I didn’t want to see them and pretended they couldn’t see me.”

Hanks, who has voiced beloved sheriff’s doll Woody since the first Toy Story in 1995, teased a historic conclusion to the long-awaited sequel to 2010’s Toy Story 3.

“When I realized what they were going for, I realized, ‘Oh, this is a moment in history,’” Hanks said.

Hanks’ longtime co-star, Buzz Lightyear actor Tim Allen, recently said he had to “resist getting emotional” when talking about Toy Story 4, which he compared to Marvel Studios’ superhero crossover epic Avengers: Infinity War and calling it “an incredibly great story.”

“If you’re at all a big superhero fan, Infinity War — I’m a big superhero fan — that didn’t seem like it was going to work [but] it was a lot of vignettes that all made sense. This Toy Story 4 [did that],” Allen said on The Talk.

“We’ve only been through it once, there will be several more incantations, but it is so emotional, it’s so funny, it’s so big, the idea that they’ve come up with. I’m startled. [Toy Story] 3 I thought was amazing. This one, I couldn’t even get through the last scene, OK?”

Allen, hesitant to reveal details about the film’s story, said only “a couple of the scenes towards the end were really hard to get through.”

Toy Story 4 has been teased as a standalone love story exploring the relationship between Woody and the porcelain Bo Peep (Annie Potts), who was revealed in Toy Story 3 to have been long sold off at a garage sale.

Toy Story and Toy Story 2 director and former Pixar CCO John Lasseter, who was originally attached as director before vacating that role, said at D23 Expo 2015 the film would center around Bo’s return.

“Bo Peep really reminds me of my wife Nancy in many ways,” he said.

“And my wife Nancy has an incredible emotional story, before I met her, so it’s a very personal story — as [is] every film at Pixar. But that’s what this one is for me. It’s a very touching story that’s inspired by my love for my wife.”

It’s unknown how much Toy Story 4 has shifted following the exit of writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (Celeste and Jesse Forever), who parted ways over creative differences.

Lasseter himself will exit the company at the end of the year following his admission he had committed “missteps” that made some employees feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.”

Before his controversy, Lasseter promoted longtime Pixar employee Josh Cooley from co-director to director. Lasseter was still attached as executive producer.

Toy Story 4 opens June 21, 2019.