Inside Out 2 Interview: Lilimar Hernandez on Voicing Val Ortiz in Pixar Sequel

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler spoke to Inside Out 2 star Lilimar Hernandez about her key role as Valentina “Val” Ortiz in the Pixar movie. The actress discussed her character, working with Pixar, and the reception of the film. The sequel to Inside Out is now streaming on Disney+ starting today.

“Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2 returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Lilimar, congrats on the film. It’s phenomenal, and it’s become a sensation. It’s the highest-grossing animated movie ever. How has it just been seeing the success and playing this key role in this movie that’s really going into the history books? Because that has to be wild to just watch unfold.

Lilimar: Insane. First and foremost, incredibly thankful. I think the entire team, or at least us as actors, we expected it to do well with people, to resonate with its audience for a lot of it, a lot of its original audience to come back and be like, “Oh, I watched this when I was really little and now I’m a teenager or an adult, and I get to watch the second part and grow with her.” Those were a lot of the comments that I really loved seeing, but I didn’t expect it to get like… this big. Almost every day or every week since it released, it was good news and good news and good news. The message is incredibly important, so I’m very happy that a lot of people got to see it and interact with it.

This movie tackles mental health in a very real and informative way. It’s just phenomenal to see something with such a great message resonating. What has stood out about the fan response to the film? Because, like you said, a lot of people grew up with it, and they’re really relating to the second film even more now.

Yeah, it made me really happy because I think there are some spaces where maybe parents or just a lot of teenagers too, they feel like they never really had a space to tackle anxiety, to tackle what panic attacks are. There are a lot of psychology terms out there that get really popular, and a lot of people don’t necessarily know what they really mean. So it’s nice to have just something this big that’s touching so many people, be done correctly intentionally with a lot of detail behind it to really not only comfort people and let them know, “Hey, this is a really normal experience. This is nothing that’s taboo. This is nothing you feel you should feel ashamed of, and if it happens, maybe this is how you can go about it.”

I mainly have just been happy to see families kind of have more of these conversations as someone who had the privilege to have that in my family since a lot of my family members are in healthcare. It makes me happy, especially for teenagers and for kids growing up. Emotional support is incredibly important.

You have a really fun role here. You play Val, she’s who Riley looks up to. You’re the captain of the hockey team. You’re super cool. What did you relate most to Val? Other than just being the coolest person in any room.

Thank you [laughs]. I liked what I think the audience was able to really pick up and appreciate too was that she was the very cool girl, absolutely just the leader, but has these leadership qualities that so easily sometimes are kind of swept under the rug when we wanna go for the mean girl trope. A lot of the time, I even remember when I was in elementary, there was always some older girl either in middle school or in high school that you felt like she had it all together.

But she was just so real and so humble and just willing to help anybody. It’s beautiful to see kind of an older sister figure that extends that hand out and it’s like, “Hey, I had to work just as hard as you feel you had to work. I had the anxiety attacks too, but I am here to be a good leader.” It makes sense why she’s in that kind of captain position, you know? I was very much excited when I saw that we weren’t really going for the cool mean girl trope or whatever.

She is a cool character. She’s got a good style. She’s got a red streak in her hair. When you’re finding the voice and tone of the character, does it help to have clear visuals? Did you find her like swagger or confidence from the character’s looks?

I did, yeah. At first I didn’t really have a lot of detail at all. Like in the audition. Obviously, it’s such a big project, they don’t really give you much detail versus when I was finally able to do my first session at the Pixar campus, which was insane in and of itself. They had a mood board up and just kind of had everything there and I got to see her and just some of the locations and stuff that they already designed. So just seeing that was like, “Whoa. Oh my gosh. I get all the details like, yes.” Sometimes it’s being animated, it’s not ready yet, so you kind of have to do your own thing, and hopefully the animators do their magic, but this was a case where I really got to see her, her style, her hair, everything. So, yeah, that definitely did help for sure.

Are you a fan of hockey? Did this character get you more involved?

It kind of did. I wasn’t a hockey fan before. Like I liked it, I liked watching it or if it just happened to be on somewhere, but zero clue on teams or general culture. I could not tell you a thing other than like, “This looks cool, I wanna watch it if it’s on.” But definitely did a little bit of hockey watch time getting prepared for this at least just to have the general energy, you know.

You’ve done a lot of voice acting in the past. I was curious if anything just stood out about Pixar’s approach because they always get such wonderful performances out of everybody.

I think it’s just the general atmosphere. I was privileged enough to be able to go to the Pixar campus and work with the team in person. So just seeing the atmosphere, the vibe, you can sense when you’re in a room with artists that love what they’re doing and have the space and the budget to be able to do what they love. It makes a huge difference. I think it was a place where you could really just pitch ideas and work together and get excited about it. I think it just made everything so much more real, and you could feel the passion everybody had behind it, especially the actors too. So I think it definitely had to do a lot with just the general environment was absolutely lovely to work in.

Your character is very much Riley’s idol. What did you like most about that relationship that we see throughout the film?

I think it’s especially important since we’re very young to teach, especially young girls, to find comradery and to find sisterhood with other girls. Because we go through the same things a lot of the time, especially when we’re looking at somebody that has kind of the life that maybe we want or the confidence we’d like to have. It’s nice when, “Oh, she’s an older sister figure, Like she is just like me. She had to go through the same things I did. She probably had anxiety on her freshman year as well.”

It’s nice to kind of show that we all have like a lot more similarities sometimes when we have differences, and to encourage that kind of, I wanna say, compassion instead of rivalry and jealousy. So, I loved just Val immediately stepping in, immediately sensing she’s nervous, she’s a little quirky, she’s weird, but it’s all in good fun. She’s just starting out. I see so much talent in her. Let me take you under my wing. I know you got this. I feel like Riley really needed that too.