Whole World Theatre co-founder now voices Mrs. Potato Head in ‘Toy Story 5′

Ever since she was a child, Anna Vocino had a knack for imitating voices.

“I could do both Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence from ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’” said Vocino, an Emory University graduate who helped start the improv group Whole World Theatre in Atlanta in 1994.

Vocino, 53, leveraged her voice into a multidecade career and plays Mrs. Potato Head in “Toy Story 5,” which opens in theaters this weekend. She took over for the late “Seinfeld” actress Estelle Harris, who died in 2022 and provided Mrs. Potato Head’s dialogue for the first four films going back to 1995.

“It’s like a fever dream,” Vocino said. “I can’t believe I got this opportunity.”

At the same time, “it’s a lot of mental pressure because Estelle’s an icon. I have big shoes to fill. I just needed to do her justice with this beautiful character she created.”

Vocino said she studied footage of Harris to learn her voice. “My natural speaking voice does not sound like hers,” Vocino said. “I had to work to embody it.”

Mrs. Potato Head is not central to the film’s plot, which focuses heavily on cowgirl Jessie, but Vocino gets to rap in the “blooper” reel after the credits roll.

“I’m not a rapper,” she said. “It’s the type of thing I typically might do in the shower, not in public.”

Anna Vocino, an Emory University grad, helped found the Atlanta improv group Whole World Theatre, in 1994. This is a cast photo from 1999 right before she left for Los Angeles. She is on the bottom. WHOLE WORLD THEATRE

Vocino, a Virginia native, discovered improv at Emory University as a freshman in 1991, enthralled by the campus improv group Rathskellar. She decided that was what she wanted to do with her life.

During her junior year, Vocino helped found Whole World Theatre.

“She was a total rock star,” said Emily Reily Russell, a fellow founding member and current managing director. “She could do anything. She was always big on impersonations and dialects.”

Since 1995, Whole World Theatre has remained a healthy nonprofit organization on Spring Street in Midtown Atlanta.

The AJC story about Whole World Theatre from nearly 30 years ago that Anna Vocino still remembers and appreciates. AJC FILE

Vocino plans to visit her old haunt next week for the first time in several years. “I’m thrilled it’s still around,” she said. “The (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) was the first publication to give us meaningful press. It really made a huge difference. I loved how the writer wrote that we had ‘ant colony-like telepathy with each other.’ I loved that phrase. It very much captured our group at the time.”

While in Atlanta, she also met her current husband and fellow actor Loren Tarquinio at Whole World. “There was such a great actor community there, even in the 1990s,” she said.

But she and Tarquinio moved to Los Angeles in 1999 to pursue bigger dreams at a time when opportunities in Georgia were limited.

“I think the skills I’ve learned in improv have served me in every aspect of life,” she said. “You can roll with whatever people say. I got my 10,000 hours at Whole World. Agents showed up and signed us for jobs there.”

In the 2000s, she dabbled in sketch comedy with fellow Whole World alum Lance Krall on his short-lived Spike TV program “The Lance Krall Show,” which shot in Atlanta in 2005. She later co-starred in the 2008 VH1 show “Free Radio,” Krall’s semiimprovised comedy about a stupid morning talk show host, which featured actual celebrities like Zachary Levi and Kiefer Sutherland. She played Krall’s more grounded and much smarter co-host.

She has played Alexa and Siri in sketches on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” where her husband worked for a time as a writer. She voiced Alexa again during the 2019 Emmy Awards, announcing Phoebe Waller-Bridge as best lead actress in a comedy.

In 2002, Vocino was diagnosed with celiac disease at a time when gluten-free options were limited. “I hated every gluten-free option out there,” she said, “so I figured out how to make yummy food that is gluten-free.”

She wrote a successful 2016 cookbook, “Eat Happy: Gluten Free, Grain Free, Low Carb Recipes for a Joyful Life” and created an entire “Eat Happy Kitchen” line of gluten-free sauces, spices and cheese bites that are now in 1,300 stores nationwide.

“I want to make clean food the norm, not the exception,” she said.

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“Toy Story 5”