‘Paradise’s Krys Marshall Cast In ‘Toy Story 5’ (Exclusive)

EXCLUSIVE: For All Mankind and Paradise star Krys Marshall is joining the cast of Toy Story 5, helmed by Pixar veteran and two-time Oscar-winning director Andrew Stanton, who helped usher the juggernaut franchise into existence.

While character details and name are under wraps, Deadline can confirm Marshall will be voicing a grownup who will have to contend with her child’s newest hobby in a showdown of Toys vs. Tech; the fifth installment sees the iconic trio Buzz (Tim Allen), Woody (Tom Hanks) and Jessie (Joan Cusack) under threat when a new smart device, Lilypad (Greta Lee), takes over playtime.

Marshall first got acquainted with Stanton, the filmmaker behind Finding Nemo and WALL-E, as a frequent director on Apple TV‘s For All Mankind.

“We got on like a house on fire. I adore Andrew,” Marshall said in an interview. “And since working with him on For All Mankind, I had a kid. And so now I’m watching kid content. And so when I heard at [D23] that they were bringing back Toy Story 5 and that Andrew would be the director, I just shot him an email, and I was like, ‘I hope you’re well. Since I saw you last, I had a kid, and I would just love to be a part of the Toy Story universe.’ And so it was the ultimate try-hard kind of email, like, embarrassingly uncool to just ask for a job, and I didn’t hear anything for nine months, and then seemingly out of the blue, I get an email saying, ‘You have an offer for Toy Story 5.’”

Marshall had previously provided additional voices to the Marvel Universe with Black Panther and did voiceover work for commercials, but this is her first role in an animated feature.

“We’re all guilty of having our noses pointed into our phones and keeping our eyes down at a screen,” she said of the film’s themes. “It’s sort of the ever-present evil in my life, as much as I love the connection I have on social media and talking to people who love the show. It’s also pretty heartbreaking that you miss so much in real life because we’re trapped in our phones, and sadly, it’s transferred over to kids. So the story is really beautiful, the duality of these toys that are aging and becoming less interesting to kids, and the ways in which tech is starting to invade, but ultimately, there’s no replacement for human imagination and that will always prevail, I believe.”

Marshall also noted her gratitude and pride in being involved in the seminal project, which will bow in theaters June 19, more than three decades removed from the first entry that started it all.

“My first day of work, Andrew showed me a video clip of 30 years ago, almost to the day, of his first session with Tom Hanks doing the role of Woody,” she recalled. “I grew up watching the Toy Story movies as a little kid and just being immersed and enamored with the characters, so to get to have a part in it and participate in this childhood history of mine is just too cool.”

From the playground to the bunker

For a moment there during the explosive second season finale of Hulu‘s Paradise, it wasn’t clear if Marshall’s unassailable Agent Nicole Robinson was going to make it out alive, much less make it out of the ticking-clock bunker.

“Dan is both so wonderful to work with and also so terrifying to work with, because, as you see with the character Annie, played by Shailene Woodley, he has no problem whatsoever killing characters that he loves,” Marshall said. “I think every single one of us is on the bubble every single episode. So you always read a script and just think, ‘I hope I don’t die. I hope I don’t die. I hope I don’t die.’”

“So the closer I got to the end of the finale,” she continued, “and I’m seeing that Agent Robinson has this wound that she’s been hiding, and that I’m reading about her final moments, I’m just like, ‘Oh my god, I’m getting killed off a show I love.’ And then that final moment where she comes out, and she’s sort of resurrected from the dead, and hobbles her way out of the bunker — I just couldn’t believe it. I was so over the moon. And then, of course, the shocker that everyone felt of seeing the bunker be blown to smithereens. I did not think that that was going to happen.”

Despite simmering tensions between the character and Jeremy Bradford (Charlie Evans) throughout the past two episodes, he doubles back later to come to her rescue amid the chaos — choosing to do so against the odds and after Robinson pulled a gun on him to encourage him to leave her behind.

“I think it’s a really interesting duality,” Marshall stated. “In normal circumstances, they would have absolutely nothing in common and no reason to ever be together. Robinson is the mistress of his dead father; Jeremy is essentially an orphaned kid who’s stuck with this woman who was in this illicit relationship with his dad.”

Despite being a “classic nepo baby,” Jeremy’s arc pivots with the save: “He’s had everything handed to him, gone to the best schools, and sort of born on third base. So when Robinson says to him, ‘You’re nothing like your father,’ it really is hurtful. Something that Cal says to Jeremy in Season 1, he basically tells him to, ‘Go, make your own way; go be the person that you can be proud of.’ And so I think that that refrain is in the back of Jeremy’s mind, thinking, ‘Who am I? What kind of person can I be? What kind of man can I grow up to be?’ So in that moment, even though they have this love-hate relationship, he does a thing that is the harder thing, that is the more valiant thing, to go back in and save her.”

In Season 1, it was revealed that Robinson was the last person to see the murdered President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) alive. Over the course of the inaugural season, confirmed further with this installment, it became clear that their connection extended far beyond an affair, comprising real love.

“What’s really beautiful about the writing of Paradise is that even though Cal is dead and gone, we’re continuing to see what that relationship meant for both of them, so much so that long after his passing, Agent Robinson is still beholden to looking after this kid, keeping him safe in order to honor Cal,” Marshall explained.

“I think anybody who’s ever lost someone always focuses on those last moments, always focuses on the conversations that you did and you didn’t have, the visits that you did and you didn’t make,” Marshall added. “I think for Nicole, she’s like a lot of women who are in a relationship with a complicated man, where he’s able to say certain things when it’s between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. There’s a lot of pillow talk going on, and so she really can’t trust if his love for her is honest or if he’s just feeding her lip service. And so she realizes, after he’s gone, unfortunately, that it was real love, and she never got a chance to express that to him. So seeing her admit that to Jeremy, his son, which in this moment becomes maybe the last person she’ll see, I think is a really important moment and a really painful moment to acknowledge that she had hardened her heart to him and become less vulnerable because the relationship was so complicated and so tenuous.”

Gearing up for Paradise Season 3

For those dying to know what happens next, the good news is that the Paradise team is already gearing up for more episodes. Marshall admitted she’s already read the first couple of scripts for the upcoming third season, which starts shooting in just over a week.

“We’re already cooking,” she said.

As for what’s to come for Robinson specifically, Marshall teased an anarchistic path for the righteous Secret Service leader, someone who’s since become disillusioned with systemic corruption.

“In Season 1, as you said, she’s this person who really believes in the rule of law and doing what’s right,” she described. “And I think that her and Xavier [Sterling K. Brown] have that a lot in common — the kind of people who dedicate their lives to the Secret Service or to any type of military position; these are folks who really do believe in sacrificing themselves, including sacrificing their lives, for the greater good. So we see a version of her that that is the nucleus, but that’s wrapped in a lot of formality and bureaucracy, and she’s part of this Washington rigidity.”

However, “as the season goes on, that starts to melt away, because we’re seeing that the things that we thought were true are now untrue, the folks who we put in charge can’t be trusted, and so that formality is shed away from her as the season goes on. And we see that even more in Season 2, with the new hair and the sort of ‘fuck it’ attitude that she has; that amazing scene in Episode 206, where she’s like, ‘I’m over it. I’m not doing fucking shit. I’m not doing anything but staying Black and dying, that’s it.’”

But despite her loss of patience, “her allegiance is still to doing the right thing; it’s to freeing the people of Paradise, it’s to giving them an option, it’s to telling them the truth. So she’s always having her compass pointed to north. Season 3, without giving away too much, she continues on that path and just expands it even further. So what does a person look like who doesn’t believe in the bureaucracy at all, who doesn’t believe in the higher powers at all, who believes that the system is corrupt and it has to be changed? What does that person do? How does that person operate in the outside world? So Agent Robinson is a badass, and she becomes an even bigger badass in season 3. She’s always scared me, but now she terrifies me.”

Teasing For All Mankind Season 5

Since 2019, Marshall has appeared on the alternative history drama series For All Mankind, which explores how the space race would have unfolded if Russia beat the U.S. to the moon landing. She portrays NASA Commander Danielle Poole, first appearing on the show as the first select for Apollo 18 after graduating from the first all-female class of astronauts. The end of Season 4 saw Dani accidentally shot during a massive kerfuffle between Mars workers and security, and after recovering, viewers see her reunite with her family on Earth.

“Yes, I am in the new season of For All Mankind,” Marshall said of Season 5, currently airing now, “but I won’t say what episode I’m in, and man, I’m just so proud of that show. It’s a miracle to do five seasons of anything in this industry and to have a show that has such a really dedicated and loyal viewing audience feels really good. I loved playing Danielle Poole. I still love playing Danielle Poole. She’s so much fun, and so yes, audiences should keep their eyes peeled for Danielle Season 5.”