When Anna Vocino’s phone rang at a hair salon outside Los Angeles last year, she assumed it was just another audition call. Instead, the call changed her career.
Her agent was delivering news she struggled to believe: Pixar had cast her as the new voice of Mrs. Potato Head in Toy Story 5. She would be taking over the role of the beloved character voiced by longtime actress Estelle Harris, who died in 2022.
“I was in absolute disbelief,” Vocino says. “I thought, ‘No, I’m just the temporary person until they hire the real person.’”
Her agent quickly corrected her. “No,” he told her. “You’re doing the actual movie.”
Vocino, who grew up in Arlington, Sterling, and Herndon while her mother served as a Methodist minister, had quietly chased the same dream for years. Every year she wrote the exact same goal on a list: Voice a role in a Pixar movie.
Growing Up in NoVA
Long before she found herself recording alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Vocino was a Northern Virginia kid making memories that still make her laugh.
She attended Sugarland Elementary School in Sterling and remembers winning a copy of Cyndi Lauper’s album She’s So Unusual by calling into WAVA’s Morning Zoo radio show with Don Geronimo and Mike O’Meara. Her mother had to drive to Arlington to pick up the prize. “I played that record with the most joy in my heart,” she says.
Years later, after starring in the television comedy Free Radio, those same radio personalities reached out on social media. “I was like, ‘You guys were my favorite morning show when I was a kid,’” she says.
Despite growing up in a region rich in museums and theaters, she says acting didn’t seem like a realistic career. “You didn’t know anybody who made their living as an actor,” she says. “You’d go to the Kennedy Center or the Folger, but you didn’t know anyone who actually worked in the arts.”
Still, that uncertainty didn’t stop her.
A Familiar Voice
Over the next 25 years, Vocino became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after voice actors. While audiences may not recognize her face, they’ve almost certainly heard her voice.
She’s matched celebrities’ voices for movie trailers and television promotions, filling in for stars including Sarah Jessica Parker. She also became the first woman to voice an entire evening of network promotions for ABC before later doing the same for NBC. “Nobody really thinks much about gender parity in television promos,” she says. “But I did.”
That experience made her an ideal candidate when Pixar began searching for someone to continue Harris’ unforgettable portrayal of Mrs. Potato Head. “I wanted to make sure I honored what she created with the character,” Vocino says. “I was very nervous to audition, but then also very nervous to do the job because I wanted to make sure I was honoring what she did.”
Even after landing the role, Vocino found it difficult to believe it was real. “My coping mechanism is, don’t get too excited,” she says. “Because it could all get taken away.”
Reality finally sank in at the film’s premiere, when she and her husband accidentally found themselves seated in Taylor Swift’s section. “We realized we were in the way of all the other famous people trying to get to Taylor Swift,” she says with a laugh. “I was just sitting there eating a slider.”
Even now, joining the Toy Story family still feels surreal. “It’s really incredible,” she says. “The honor of a lifetime.”
Taking over Mrs. Potato Head meant honoring Harris while making the role her own. “When you watch Estelle Harris, that’s her voice,” Vocino says. “I obviously don’t sound like that naturally. So I had to really do a deep dive.”
She believes the enduring popularity of the Toy Story films comes down to something Pixar does better than almost anyone else. “They capture the human condition,” she says. “They hit us right in that place in our hearts.”
A Colorful Career
Away from the recording booth, Vocino is also a comedian, cookbook author, podcaster, and entrepreneur whose food company grew out of her own experience with celiac disease and low-carb cooking.
“I think when I was coming up, people thought you had to stay in your lane,” she says. “Now I think if there’s something you want to do, go do it. Why not?”
The little girl who once called WAVA hoping to win a Cyndi Lauper album now shares a cast list with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. For Vocino, the journey really has taken her from Northern Virginia to infinity … and beyond.
Feature image courtesy Strategic Global Media/Photo by Joanna Degeneres
This story originally ran in our September issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
