# Anxiety (Inside Out)

Anxiety is a fictional character from the 2024 film Inside Out 2. She is the personification of the emotion of the same name. Maya Hawke is the official voice of the character, whose role was landed after having a meeting with director Kelsey Mann via Zoom in a back office at Epcot.
Originally, the character was going to be a shape-shifting monster who would lie about who he was, but this was changed so as not to further complicate the story. The character was generally well received by critics, who praised her personality and Hawke's performance.

## Development

In the early drafts of Inside Out 2, Anxiety was intended to be an antagonistic force. Kelsey Mann, the director of the film, said that she felt like a "Cardboard Villain", and was unsatisfied with the writing. He hired two psychologists as advisers. Lisa Damour and Dacher Keltner, and they decided to rewrite it so that Anxiety would be motivated by the love of Riley. Lisa Damour stated that one of the ways to solve anxiety, grounding, or touching a physical object, inspired a scene where Riley overcomes a panic attack by touching a Hockey Stick. Originally, she was going to create a shape-shifting monster who would lie about who she was, but that was changed so as not to complicate the story. Character designer Deanna Marsigliese then toned down the character to "make something a little more accessible."
Mann found an analogy to All About Eve, with the characters of Joy and Anxiety, as she is "like the emotional naïve initially willing to support Joy and learn from her… Instead of making Riley cool, as Anxiety suggests, Joy ramps up the emotion and embarrasses her." Animating the character was a difficult task for animators Dovi Anderson and Evan Bonifaci, as “the size of his mouth is bigger than his skull or head,” Bonifacio said. He added: “It’s very present with all these teeth and lip controls, and it’s not inside a skull like our normal mouths are. So it was very difficult to figure out the right amount of controls and how to give the animator something that was intuitive.”
On November 9, 2023, Maya Hawke was revealed to be voicing the character. Mann auditioned Hawke via Zoom at the office of a back room in Epcot during a family vacation with his kids after Nielsen told him that Hawke was available to audition just then, with her anxious performance driving him to tears. The anxiety attack was one of the defining moments of the film. According to cinematographers Jonathan Pytko and Adam Habib, “We wanted to show an image that was compelling. It’s not something you want to just throw away.” It becomes a “frenetic whirlwind” as Riley gets deeper into the attack. And when she calms down, the “color shifts from a cooler tone to a warmer tone to start bringing that joy back into the frame,” Pytko said. Uncut Gems was cited as an inspiration for all of Anxiety's scenes, specially the visually intensive ones.

## Appearances
### Inside Out 2

She is one of the four new emotions inside Riley Andersen's mind. After Riley goes to an ice hockey summer camp, she decides to take over Riley's brain entirely. Joy and the other main emotions are stranded, and are forced to come back. Anxiety tries to mold Riley in her own image, causing Riley to be obsessed with succeeding in hockey. At one point, Riley has a panic attack. However, by the end of the film, the other emotions come back.

### Video games

On June 13, 2024, the day before Inside Out 2's release, kart-racing game Disney Speedstorm began its eighth season, Journey of Emotions, which is based on Inside Out.

## Reception

Anxiety has received praise. Meg Walter of Deseret said that the film helped her understand her own anxiety. Noah Berlatsky, in a CNN article, said that " I appreciate the way that “Inside Out 2” gives its anxious antagonist a heart and some positive characteristics amidst its frantic quivering" Owen Gleiberman of Variety praised Hawke's performance as Anxiety, calling it a "grotesquely styled voice that might as well have been called Caffeinated Calculus or Desire to Belong or Obsessive-Compulsive Social Climbing FOMO." The character attracted further attention, for example, from Vulture's Alison Willmore or Jordan Hoffman for Entertainment Weekly. J. Michael Jordan of Christianity Today praised the character throughout the film, calling her an important character throughout the film.