From the Emory stage to an animated voice in ‘Toy Story 5’
August 14, 2026 April Hunt
Anna Vocino co-founded Atlanta’s Whole World Improv Theater when she was a student at Emory. Since then, she has cultivated a successful voiceover career — including being the new voice of Mrs. Potato Head in “Toy Story 5.” Photo by Joanna Degeneres.
You’ve probably heard Emory alumna and versatile voice actor Anna Vocino.
You just thought it was Kirsten Dunst. Or Kate Winslet. Or Megan Mullally. Or Victoria Beckham.
“I am known for voice matching,” Vocino says of the acting skill, often used in post-production, of copying another person's tone, pitch and texture closely enough that listeners cannot distinguish the replacement from the original actor.
“Well, I am known for that to four people, and those are my agents,” Vocino adds with a laugh.
Those agents, and two decades of successful voice work, helped Vocino laugh all the way to her biggest role yet: voicing Mrs. Potato Head in “Toy Story 5” this summer.
She takes over from Estelle Harris, who voiced the role in the previous four films before passing away in 2022. Harris was best known for her exaggeratedly shrill voice and bossy mannerisms on “Seinfeld.”
“Pixar could have used AI for Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, so to audition as Estelle Harris was such an incredible opportunity,” Vocino says. “What you hear, I’m doing my best to embody her and that character.”
Without Emory, the world might never have known of Vocino’s talents.
Despite having grown up dreaming of living in L.A. and acting on a sitcom, Vocino arrived at Emory expecting to follow a more traditional route. That was until Rathskellar, Emory’s improv comedy troupe, performed at orientation.
Vocino auditioned and was accepted as a first-year student. She then spent the next four years advancing her acting and comedy skills, improving her sketch writing, and sharing the stage with students who went on to become entrepreneurs, teachers and, in one case, a pediatric oncologist.
“Going to Emory and getting into Rathskellar changed the trajectory of my life,” she says. “I had struggled with the idea of wanting to be an actor because my family was very concerned and wanted me to have a stable future.”
Instead, Vocino used skills she’d gained in a theater administration course to co-found Atlanta’s Whole World Improv Theater in 1994, while still an undergraduate.
She began attracting attention from agents interested in her comedic acting and dialect skills, which helped convince her parents that she could forgo law school after graduating with a degree in history and French studies from Emory College of Arts and Sciences in 1995.
She went on to perform in Atlanta five times a week for six years and gradually added voiceover work for local TV stations to her resume.
Once Vocino voiced her first national spot for AT&T, she never looked back. She and husband Loren Tarquinio, an actor-turned-writer she met at Whole World, moved to Los Angeles to pursue work in television. Vocino landed several small TV roles, but also returned to the improv stage with Upright Citizens Brigade LA. During that time, she steadily secured enough voice acting work to make it her full-time job.
She entered the national scene when she voiced Dunst in an MTV “Celebrity Deathmatch” sketch in 2007 and was regularly used off- and on-camera on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” starting in 2009.
In addition to voice-matching work for major stars (including Winslet for the 2014 film “Divergent”), Vocino voiced several video game characters, recorded automated responses for phone lines and promotional spots for ABC and NBC’s national programming. She jokes that she got skilled at saying “Next, on ‘How to Get Away with Murder,’” very quickly.
“I am a reluctant yes-sayer, so I feel very lucky,” she says of her move into regular voice acting. “Atlanta was an incredible training ground.”
The steady work also provided Vocino the bandwidth to start her own food company, Eat Happy Kitchen, based on gluten-free and low-sugar recipes she began developing following a celiac disease diagnosis. She’s also written three cookbooks.
“I really like the idea that you don’t know when you’re in college what you will do. I didn’t,” Vocino says. “Explore these different things because you don’t know the threads and connective tissue that will create your life.”
