Gather round, kids, it's storytime! Growing up, my Mom kept an old, decrepit doll of hers named Patti Playpal in our unfinished basement closet. It was one of those child-size dolls from the early 60s that blinked and laughed when you interacted with it. I was terrified of that damned thing. In fact, my friends and I used to play a twisted game with Patti. The rules were simple: venture into the closet, touch the doll, then make an escape before the wretched thing could devour your soul. I've another, more tragic tale concerning Patti Playpal from my youth, though I'll save that story for another day.
For the moment, I'd like to bring your attention to Christina Hendricks' TOY STORY 4 villain Gabby Gabby, the vintage playtime companion making trouble for Woody and his friends in the Josh Cooley-directed sequel to Pixar's beloved TOY STROY 3.
“We couldn’t have picked a better person to voice our villain than Christina Hendricks,” Cooley told Entertainment Weekly as part of an exclusive spread about the pint-sized terror. “It’s perfect. She can play such sweet innocence and kindness, and then at the flip of a switch, she can go just so cold and terrifying. It’s so much fun,” Cooley added.
As EW describes, Gabby Gabby as a pullstring doll from the 1950s remanded to a life inside a sleepy antique shop. It was also noted that she proverbially acts as a snake in Woody's boot from the get-go, forgoing any attempt at making herself out to be sugary sweet a la Ned Beatty's TOY STORY 3 villain, Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear. “I’ve always loved The Twilight Zone and that Talking Tina-type of thing. We’ve never seen creepy, old dolls like that in Toy Story, and this was an opportunity to do that,” says Cooley. “Gabby has been in this antique store for 60-plus years. Gabby is a perfect toy except for the fact that she’s got one thing broken about her that’s been keeping her from being purchased and loved forever.”
As it turns out, that "broken thing" is a falty voice box, thanks to a manufacturer’s defect. Damn you, 1950s factory regulations, do you have any idea how many nightmares you're responsible for? Once, while sleeping over at my friend Jeff's house, his Pee-Wee Herman pullstring doll went off in the middle of the night, batteries low and his voice demonic. The not-so-secret word of that evening was AAAGGGHHHHH!!!
“Because of this defect, she has never known the love of a child or been able to fulfill her destiny to love one back,” Hendricks recently told People. This being the case, Gabby Gabby has spent much of her time in the antique shop gathering an army of voiceless ventriloquist dummies to do her evil bidding, with a dummy by the name of Benson as her second-in-command. “She can just tell her henchmen of ventriloquist dummies to do her bidding for her, and they do,” says Cooley. “She’s like the Godfather, where she doesn’t really have to do much to do a lot.”
Here's the official synopsis for TOY STORY 4:
When a new toy called "Forky" joins Woody and the gang, a road trip alongside old and new friends reveals how big the world can be for a toy.
With a screenplay written by Stephany Folsom, TOY STORY 4 will star Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Patricia Arquette, Timothy Dalton, Annie Potts, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristen Schall, Joan Cusack, Bonnie Hunt, Jodi Benson, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, and many, many more!
Gabby Gabby will arrive in theaters as the villain of TOY STORY 4 on June 21st.