'You feel it all deeply': Pixar's first rom-com 'Elemental' talks frankly about racism

The journey to “Elemental,” Pixar’s new animated film (in theaters Friday), started eight years ago in the New York borough of the Bronx.

Pixar veteran Peter Sohn − he directed "Elemental" as well as 2015's "The Good Dinosaur," and his likeness informed the face of Russell in “Up” − was back where he grew up for a festival celebrating the arts.

“I had invited my brother and my parents, who came here from Korea with nothing, and I looked at them and thought of their sacrifices and just cried,” says Sohn, 45.

About a year later, he was telling that story to friends at Pixar who immediately told him this should be his next film. “That one day in the Bronx was the seed,” he says.

“Elemental” charts the romance between two polar opposites: fire (Ember Lumen, voiced by Leah Lewis) and water (Wade Ripple, voiced by Mamoudou Athie).

They live in Element City, surrounded by diverse, well, elements (including earth and air), but find their mutual attraction might come with disastrous consequences. Namely, that a kiss will mean she'll be extinguished and he'll boil and evaporate. Not your usual romantic comedy woes.

But true love has a way of defying chemistry, and much of the film is centered on Ember’s struggle not so much with her love life but with her identity.

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Where Wade comes from a well-to-do aquatic clan that lives in a fancy high rise, Ember is an immigrant from the world of fire who is bent on honoring her parents by taking over their shop, which peddles things fire people would eat (that would be wood).

Ember’s road to self-discovery is of course a proxy for Sohn’s story, he says. But it is also a genuinely American saga – the quest to fit in while retaining one’s cultural roots – that resonated for both lead voice actors as well as much of the multinational production company, says “Elemental” producer Denise Ream.

“We talked to so many of the people in our studio who are first- and second-generation immigrants, who have added so much to our Pixar community, and we wanted to honor that with this film,” she says. “Life is just more interesting in a diverse world.”

Mamoudou Athie says Pixar's 'Elemental' spoke to his immigrant background 'on a cellular level'

Athie, 34, whose parents emigrated from Mauritania in western Africa when he was a child, just became an American citizen last year. He says he feels “a level of gratitude to my parents that I cannot express, so doing this movie is really a love letter to them. This film just spoke to me on a cellular level.”

Lewis, 26, was born in China and adopted by an American family when she was 6 months old. Her character’s frustrations – at one point, Ember is shunned by those afraid of her fiery constitution – were familiar.

Though her parents weren't immigrants, “I grew up Chinese American, so I did at times feel that sense of otherness that Ember feels when she goes around Element City,” says Lewis. “My parents were always there for me, which was invaluable.”

Much of the voiceover work for “Elemental” took place during the pandemic. Athie and Lewis were never in the same recording booth together, and only met for the first time last summer.

For his part, Mamoudou says he grew up as a very self-conscious boy, and finding the exuberant positivity of Wade required what he calls “clown work.” Not the circus kind, but rather exercises meant to take him back to the carefree, honest emotions of youth.

“Clown class gets you to be yourself,” he says. “Whether it’s unabashed joy or deep anger, you feel it all deeply.”

Lewis says she related to Ember’s fierce pride and determination and had to discover the character’s more vulnerable side over time.

“You even see it in the way she is animated, when she’s feeling down and unsure, her light literally dims,” says Lewis. “It was a challenge to keep my heart open for all these emotions. Peter (Sohn) would reel me back in a bit when I was too sassy or angry or sobbing. He’d say, ‘Ember wouldn’t sob.’ ”

Peter Sohn 'was angry at the world' when he began making 'Elemental' but veered back toward the light

While “Elemental” plays like a rom-com, it does not shy away from the issue of racism.

At one point in the movie, after Ember's father, Bernie, seems to recognize Wade, Ember says, "Not all water people look alike," an allusion to the sentiments that many ethnic groups can relate to when being stereotyped. In another scene, Ember is yelled at by Element City citizens who tell her they don't want fire people around.

But in truth, the movie was on track to be much more bleak.

“I lost both my parents during the making of this movie, and I was angry at the world and that was starting to show,” says Sohn.

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But Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter pulled Sohn aside and challenged him on the increasingly bleak tone. Sohn said his intent was always to simply salute his parents with an Asian American tale that he quickly decided to make more abstract and universal.

“The xenophobia aspect had become a loud piece in the movie, but in honoring my parents, it felt like the wrong thing," says Sohn. "The intent was to make something hopeful that focuses on something anyone can connect to, which is gratitude toward those people who sacrifice for you."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Elemental,' Pixar's first rom-com, explores racism, identity and love