Jeff Bergman takes over Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5
Jeff Bergman is stepping into Don Rickles’s Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5, adding another inherited role to a career built on keeping Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck alive.
CBS Saturday Morning sat down with Jeff Bergman as the veteran voice actor discussed stepping in for Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5. Disney says the film is set for theaters on June 19, and Pixar says the story turns on Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie and the rest of Bonnie’s toys facing Lilypad, a frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee.
Rickles originated Mr. Potato Head in the first Toy Story film before his death in 2017, and Pixar later used archival recordings to include him in Toy Story 4. Estelle Harris, who voiced Mrs. Potato Head, died in 2022, leaving another major role in the toy family open for a new performer. Bergman’s entry into that lineup places him inside one of Pixar’s most tightly protected continuities, where the sound of a character can carry as much recognition as the character design itself.
The assignment also fits the core of Bergman’s career at Warner Bros., where he is part of the veteran Looney Tunes voice cast on Looney Tunes Cartoons. Warner Bros. describes Looney Tunes as home to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the classic gang, and Bergman is widely identified as the first performer to replace Mel Blanc as the voices of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck after Blanc’s death in 1989. That work depends on close study of timing, cadence and vocal texture, the sort of archival listening that lets a new actor sound familiar without flattening the original performance.
CBS has already framed the segment as The voice behind your favorite cartoon characters, a label that fits Bergman’s job in both franchises. In Looney Tunes, he helps keep decades-old characters moving forward for Warner Bros.; in Toy Story 5, he joins Pixar’s returning trio of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack as the studio pushes Woody, Buzz and Jessie against a new generation of screen-driven toys. The commercial value is obvious: audiences do not just buy the characters back, they buy the illusion that nothing has changed, even when the voices behind them have.
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