Jeff Bergman talks taking over Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5

Jeff Bergman spent the June 27 edition of CBS Saturday Morning talking about one of animation’s hardest handoffs: stepping in for Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5. Paramount Press Express listed Bergman as a guest for the broadcast, which followed the film’s June 19 theatrical release and put a veteran voice actor at the center of Pixar’s latest franchise shift.

Disney and Pixar frame Toy Story 5 as “Toy meets Tech,” a story that pushes the toys into a world where Bonnie is more interested in a frog-shaped smart tablet named Lilypad than in the playthings that once defined the series. The official synopsis says Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Bullseye and the rest of the gang have their roles challenged by that new threat to playtime. Andrew Stanton directs the film, McKenna Harris is co-director, and Jessica Choi produces it, giving the sequel a creative team that has to balance nostalgia with a premise built around screens, software and a changing childhood.

Bergman’s arrival carries a different kind of continuity. Don Rickles died on April 6, 2017, at age 90, after voicing Mr. Potato Head in the first three Toy Story films, and archival audio was used for a brief appearance in Toy Story 4. Bergman has said he is carrying on the spirit and essence of Rickles’ performance, a task that asks a voice actor to preserve a character’s familiar snap without turning it into imitation. That hidden labor is central to legacy casting: the audience is meant to hear the same character, not the seams.

Bergman brings that experience from another long-running cartoon world. Warner Bros. Animation’s Looney Tunes Cartoons page names him among the veteran voice cast alongside Eric Bauza and Bob Bergen, and Warner Bros. continues to build the franchise around classic figures like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. In Toy Story 5, that makes Bergman a fitting bridge between generations, carrying one beloved voice into another property built on the burden of memory.