Emeryville, California – It’s a sunny but chilly morning as Dom Shy and Lindsey Collins walk through Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville.
This is a quiet moment for both women, who have spent the past month on the awards circuit for their work on the animated movie “Turning Red.”
The movie was nominated for an Oscar this year.
Winning the Academy Award would be historic for Xi, who became the first woman to single-handedly direct a Pixar feature film. Collins was nominated as a producer.
Both credit the predominantly female lead team for the gritty story about a young girl going through puberty.
“It wasn’t a taboo for us because we’ve all been through it. So I think you’ll start to see more of these stories that push the boundaries of what’s taboo because the storytellers are very different now,” Shi said.
Collins has acted in the Academy Award winning films ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘Ratatouille’ and ‘WALL-E’.
But this is her first Academy Award nomination because The Producers wasn’t included in the Best Animated Feature category until 2013. She views Shi as the next generation of Pixar storytellers.
“I think there’s a willingness in this generation to talk about more things more openly,” Collins said. “We’re trying to be very thoughtful about how we make sure we’re telling kind of diverse stories and different types of stories.”
“Shifting Red” definitely breaks barriers.
It tells the story of a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl navigating the anxieties and emotions of puberty, and a family legacy that turns her into a giant red panda.
“It’s a small step toward normalizing puberty for a girl or just puberty in general,” Shi said. “The growth is messy and hairy and horny and weird. But we all go through it and it’s totally normal and okay.”
Collins said the production staff was able to draw on their own experiences growing up as a young girl.
Collins explained, “We kind of didn’t guess some of the most daring, radical scenes in the movie, the awkward scenes. I think we all felt like we had those moments.”
Shi has received letters from fans, many of them young girls, thanking her for the film and helping them through difficult times.
Making the film during the pandemic has been its own challenge. The team had to spend a lot of time isolated at home and communicate through video calls.
Then, the US theatrical release in January of 2022 was canceled by the COVID-19 surge forcing the film to go straight to streaming.
Shi and the rest of the production team missed a personal media tour. So far, Xi has been beaming with cheer at award ceremonies.
“It’s a surreal and amazing experience to be able to go there and meet your fellow candidates,” Shi said. “To talk to people like Cate Blanchett who you’ve seen with her kids and love. I can’t believe this is happening.”
Shi is not new to the red carpet. In 2019, she won an Oscar for Animated Short Film pawAbout a mother suffering from empty nest syndrome.
Xi used her moment on the Oscars stage to send a message to future storytellers.
“To all the geeky girls out there who hide behind sketchbooks, don’t be afraid to tell the world your stories,” Shi said as she raised the Oscar statuette during the 2019 Academy Awards.
She’s excited that Turning Red has been nominated in a year when “everything everywhere at once” has garnered so much attention.
At their core, both films revolve around the relationship between a mother and her daughter in a Chinese immigrant family.
“I see them as our big sister in our movie. It could be like a really fun double feature,” expressed Shi, who is working on a new project.
It is not a sequel to “Turning Red”. Nothing will reveal what it is about other than not to say another movie about a relationship between a mother and a child.
“After making Bao, I realized I still had things I wanted to unpack in that relationship with my mom, but after a short showing and a feature I think I’m good,” she said with a laugh.
Disney is the parent company of this station.
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