By Courtney Potter

Disney+’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made will introduce audiences to pint-sized sleuth Timmy (Winslow Fegley) and his 1,500-pound polar bear partner, Total, as they set out around Portland, Oregon, to establish the “best detective agency in town, probably the world”—despite his frazzled mom Patty (Ophelia Lovibond) and her well-meaning boyfriend Crispin (Kyle Bornheimer); his teacher/nemesis Mr. Crocus (Wallace Shawn); his school-mandated guidance counselor, Mr. Jenkins (Craig Robinson); and several other über-colorful characters.

Just a few days ago, D23 cracked the proverbial case and was lucky enough to chat with members of the Timmy Failure cast about the making of the film, what they hope audiences take away, and so much more—read on to deduce some auspicious anecdotes!

Winslow Fegley (Timmy) talks about his character, and what he thinks the kids teach the adults—and by extension, the audience—in the film…
“I was not familiar with the [Timmy Failure] book,” Fegley shares, “but probably [after] the first or second audition, my dad and I started reading them and I just kind of automatically fell in love with the story… I’m a little different than Timmy, but I also have some similarities; he doesn’t think through things twice, he kind of just acts spontaneously, which I think I sometimes do as well… if you look through my sketchbook, I’ll have like 80 half-drawn drawings because I just always jump into the next thing. But I’m 11 years old and I’m working on it,” he admits. As for the story of Timmy Failure, Fegley hopes it confirms “it’s OK to be different—and you don’t have to fake to be someone else, and you don’t have to be afraid to be yourself because people will like you for who you are.”

Ai-Chan Carrier (Timmy’s detective rival Corrina Corrina) on how she got involved in show business…
“I started singing when I was younger,” says Carrier, “and my singing coach said, ‘Hey, there’s this musical that you should try out for right now.’ And I said, ‘OK!’ and I got the part.” (Carrier’s first professional job was playing Princess Ying in a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.) “I had this little paragraph that I had to say, and I was the only one in the middle of the stage. I loved that moment. I did [the show] for two months, and I said to my dad, ‘I want to do it like the other kids; I want to take acting lessons.’” She laughs and adds, “And after acting lessons, I came here [to Timmy Failure]!”

Kei (Timmy’s grades-obsessed best friend Rollo Tookus) recalls how his dad helped him learn his lines through the magic of technology, and what it was like shooting his favorite scene…
“My dad and I run lines all the time, and usually we’re right next to each other running them,” Kei says. “But when I went to Vancouver [to shoot the film], I was with my mom—so I would video call him and he would help me read and annotate my lines… I think learning lines was the easiest part; doing the homework and finding what your character really wants in a scene.” And is there a certain scene that sticks out in Kei’s memory? “My favorite scene to shoot was the bank scene where I run into a door!,” he laughingly admits. “I did my own stunt for the first two takes and then they’re like, ‘OK, Kei, you need to stop running into the door because we don’t want you getting hurt!’” (Don’t fret, parents of the world; Kei was unharmed.)

Chloe Coleman (animal-activist schoolmate Molly Moskins) on what the experience of making Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made taught her…
“The character of Molly is a feminist, and she believes in everything,” Coleman explains. “She’s strong and passionate about [what] she supports and I wish everybody could be like that… I really learned that being yourself or supporting things—you’re trying to help other people, not focusing the world on you. It’s something I wish more people would do. So I think I learned that—especially for me, like at my school, sometimes it can even happen [where] kids feel left out. There are mean kids in the world. I learned to include everybody—to make sure, if somebody feels sad, that I can do something about it.”

Kyle Bornheimer (Crispin), Ophelia Lovibond (Patty), and Wallace Shawn (Mr. Crocus) remember seeing how Total the polar bear came to “life” on set…
“I love movie sets and TV sets because you’re a part of this collective,” explains Bornheimer. “And also, you’re ‘putting on a show’ and you [realize] ‘Oh, I see, they used a real person so they can reference [the polar bear] and so the camera knows exactly what the spacing is.’ And you feel like you’re part of the effect itself, and that you’re all in this together… [plus] you can see how helpful that would be to Winslow.” Shawn agrees, adding, “It was pretty convincing and seemed quite real.” “You’re pretending all the time” as actors, explains Lovibond; “If anything, it’s one more thing to pretend it’s not really there—it doesn’t feel incongruous.” The effect in the film, Bornheimer notes, “is flawless. I mean, my mom was amazed that that wasn’t really a polar bear!”

Bornheimer reveals what he loves about the movie; a message he hopes audiences take away; and his own familial connection to the subject matter…
“One of the reasons Tom [McCarthy, the film’s director] wanted to set it in Portland is that it’s a city that celebrates its uniqueness and celebrates its weirdness,” he explains. “And one of the themes of the film [is] ‘Only normal people are normal.’ And the city, and the characters, and the story all reflect that—and all really celebrate [that]. And I loved that about it from the get-go… I also just love the simple message along the lines of imagination, of hitting an age when you have a decision to make about your imagination—on continuing to foster it but then adding accountability to it. My kids are 11 and 9 right now, and I certainly see the same thing. I want them to be kids forever, but they also have to learn that they’ll have some accountability. There’s a big strain in this movie about whether or not Timmy understands accountability, and it’s played out very simply but very gracefully…”

Lovibond on becoming a part of the Disney tradition of films that the whole family can enjoy together…
“You watch [Disney films] growing up,” says Lovibond. “And it’s strange to then be in one—because you watch them with your kids, and then you’re in one for other children… it’s sounds corny but it is quite dream-like. Because they’re part of your childhood. You reference them—you can make a reference and someone knows what movie you’re talking about. And now to contribute to that canon [with this film] is a lovely legacy.”

Don’t miss Disney+’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, premiering February 7!

By Beth Deitchman

A crowd has assembled at a park in North Portland, not far from the city’s iconic St. Johns Bridge. A rainbow of picnic blankets fills the grassy lawn, and in keeping with local culinary tradition, colorful food trucks are parked at the edge of the celebration while scores of kids and families work up an appetite. Many are in costumes inspired by wild animals, and there’s even a polar bear in our midst (more on that later!). Though a light mist falls over the location, the cast of the Disney+ original movie Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (along with a sizeable group of Oregonian extras) prepares to begin their day of filming. “You’re from Portland—you can do it!” cheers the film’s assistant director as they get started, and the weather has no impact at all on the mood of the crowd. In fact, it’s invigorating to them, and only underscores the filmmakers’ decision to base this quirky story in a city that celebrates being different.

The fifth grader at the heart of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made truly marches to the beat of his own drum. Winslow Fegley stars as Timmy, a bit of an outsider at school with a hilarious deadpan sense of humor. Timmy enjoys a warm relationship with his overburdened single mother, Patty, and he has an equally close but complicated dynamic with his business partner in Total Failure Inc.—the detective agency he runs with Total, a 1,500-pound polar bear. (We told you it was complicated.)

The film—which premieres on Disney+ this Friday, February 7—is based on the first in a popular series of books by Stephan Pastis, creator and illustrator of the syndicated comic strip Pearls Before Swine. When Pastis embarked upon writing his first novel, he was drawn to the idea of a great detective who might not actually have much of a clue. “It made me laugh to think of someone who’s very arrogant and thinks he’s the world’s best at something. That dichotomy, between how he saw himself and how he really was, made me laugh,” Pastis tells us.

Pastis’ book, Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, became a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 2013 and it also found a fan in Tom McCarthy—director of acclaimed films such as The Station Agent, Win Win, and Spotlight (for which he received an Oscar® for best original screenplay). McCarthy came on board as director and co-wrote the screenplay with Pastis, who shares that seeing his novel come to life is “just like the inside of your brain has exploded.” During an action sequence filmed earlier in the production—which involved a car driving into a house—he marveled, “That’s only happening because one day I typed that.”

The author shares that he and McCarthy veered somewhat from the book as they envisioned bringing it to the screen, but it was imperative to both of them to retain Timmy’s unique voice. The character appears in literally every scene of the film, and the production looked at thousands of young actors before Fegley was cast. Timmy Failure producer Jim Whitaker (A Wrinkle in Time) says of Fegley, “He was just Timmy Failure. He’s got this certain quality of being his own unique soul. You can feel it. You can see it in his eyes.” Whitaker explains that Fegley intrinsically understood Timmy’s belief that he is a brilliant detective. “He plays the part in the way of not knowing the irony of the fact that [Timmy] is a failure. He’s not the greatest in the world, but he truly believes he is,” Whitaker says, “and in the end, he’s really not wrong because he is who he is.”

Though some might think of Total as a product of Timmy’s imagination, Whitaker emphasizes, “Total is a polar bear in real life to us.” To realize the character, the filmmakers studied polar bears in captivity and enlisted Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Rich McBride to help bring Total to the screen. McBride is no stranger to bears, having won the Academy Award® for designing and creating the bear that terrorizes Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Revenant. “That’s the standard we’re holding [McBride] to and that he wants to hold himself to,” Whitaker explains, stressing that McBride shares their commitment to making Total a real polar bear that Timmy—and viewers—will adore. “It’s not an anthropomorphized polar bear. It’s not a polar bear that talks,” Whitaker notes. “He shows up in unusual places—in the middle of scenes he’ll pop up—he’ll kind of show up in a closet. He shows up wherever Timmy’s imagination wants him to show up.”

In McBride’s first conversation with McCarthy, the director shared that his vision for the movie was that it have quirky, “indie” sensibilities, but with a giant visual effect—aka a real polar bear—in the middle of it. They talked about using costumes, but according to McBride, “McCarthy wanted it to feel like a real bear. He kept referencing his dog, Georgia. So it’s like a sidekick, someone who is always following [Timmy] around and does quirky things but still acts like a real bear.” McBride and his team digitally created a complete skeleton, a full muscle system, and a full skin system that will drive the behavior and movement of the fur on the surface by the time Total comes to life on screen.

To create a foundation for these incredible visual effects that will be added in post, Michael Adamthwaite is on set to provide motion capture reference. He’s suited up in what he refers to as “a bear-shaped canoe” and walking on all fours. “It’s blown out all the possibilities for what they can do for every shot,” he says of the marriage of technology and performance capture that’s turning an imaginary polar bear into a realistic on-screen sidekick.

“Polar bears have a lot of charm and they’re funny and quirky and they do silly things,” McBride says. “I think we can incorporate their real behaviors within the action that we have within the movie.”

Total may be adorable, but that’s not why Pastis chose a 1,500-pound polar bear companion for Timmy when he first put pencil to paper. “The true answer is I don’t really think stuff through,” he laughs, but acknowledges that Total is symbolic of Timmy’s father, who left before the events of the story start to unfold. “It’s because it’s big and strong and he’s missing a dad in his life. To some degree [Total is] probably a substitute for a father who would normally be a protector, but also be sort of soft and gentle,” Pastis shares.

And while some parents might try to put the kibosh on an imagination as active as Timmy’s, Patty Failure is happy to let it be. “She doesn’t discourage it. She doesn’t encourage it either. She just allows it to kind of cultivate,” says Ophelia Lovibond, who plays Timmy’s equally quirky mom. Patty doesn’t worry until she finds her son watching TV after a bad day, rather than living in his own creative world. She sees Timmy and Patty as a “dream team.” “It’s not a mother telling her son what to do all the time. It’s just that they’re in this together,” Lovibond says. “She’s really open with him about the fact that cash flow is a bit of a problem. She doesn’t stress him out about it but she’s honest about things. She’s like, ‘C’mon, you’ve got to help me out here. We’re going to do this together.’” They’re friends, as well as mother and son.

Pastis believes that audiences will relate to the story of Timmy, a young boy who is struggling in a difficult situation at home. “All he really has going for him is his imagination,” the author says. And it’s Timmy’s imagination—not to mention that of Pastis and McCarthy—that makes Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made a film like none that you’ve seen before.

“There’s a tendency in the world that we live in to say, oh, the film is ‘this-meets-this.’ This is not ‘anything-meets-anything.’ It’s its own unique film,” Whitaker says of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, emphasizing, “I think [the film] will feel very different in a good way.” And that estimation couldn’t be more apt for a story that celebrates individuality, set in a city that is also very different in a good way, where a little rain and the first-ever fifth grader-polar bear detective duo would both receive a totally warm welcome.