Pixar’s latest film Soul debuts on Disney+ in just a few more days on Friday, December 25th, delivering to fans just in time for Christmas the story of jazz musician Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), who just as he gets his big break finds himself not only trying to hold onto the life he loves but also showing the jaded new soul 22 what’s great about living in the process. Along the way, Joe ends up being faced with some of life’s most important questions and begins to see some of the people in his life in a whole new light. Among those people are his mother, Libba, who takes a bit of a tough love approach to her son. Voiced by Phylicia Rashad, the character may remind some of another iconic mother the actress as played — Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show — but for Rashad it was as much her own real-life role as a mother that helped her understand Libba.
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Speaking with ComicBook.com recently, Rashad said that she understood Libba very clearly as a mother herself.
“I understood it,” Rashad said when asked how she approached the character. “I understood it very clearly, as a mother who loves her son more than anything, who wants to see him stable and successful in life. And thinking that she knows exactly what that is and how that’s supposed to be but having to come to terms with the fact that, maybe, there’s something she missed. Absolutely.”
Rashad also had a similar approach to how she felt about Soul more broadly, thinking of the film — which is Pixar’s first feature with a Black lead — in as she does all of her work in what it means for people more broadly.
“I didn’t think of it like that,” Rashad said when asked about what it was like to be part of the milestone film. “I thought of it like I think of all my work, in terms of what it means for people. You know, what it says about humanity, what it says about the way we think and the way we live and the way we move and the way we love and the things we understand and the things we don’t understand. What we can hold onto, what we need to let go.”
You can check out the synopsis of Soul below.
Soul follows Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks, and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22 (Tina Fey), who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions.
Soul debuts on Disney+ on December 25th.
