PROFILE: Kori Rae & Darla K. Anderson
We start our celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month with our profile on Pixar producers Kori Rae & Darla K. Anderson.
Kori Rae started as an Animation Manager in 1998 on A Bug's Life and in 1999 on Toy Story 2. In 2001, she became Associate Producer on Cars 2 and 2004 on The Incredibles. She served as Pre-Production Producer on Up and as Producer on Monsters University and, most recently, Onward. She also served as Producer and Executive Producer on the Cars Toons shorts and a special thank you for Jack-Jack Attack.
Darla K. Anderson started at Pixar in 1995 as a "Digital Angel" on Toy Story. Since then, she served as a producer on A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Toy Story 3 and, most recently, Coco. She also served as Executive Producer on the Pixar shorts It's Tough To Be A Bug! and Mater and the Ghostlight.
She also received special thanks on several movies and shorts including Ratatouille, Up, Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Geri's Game, Mike's New Car, Exploring The Reef, Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation and Sanjay's Super Team.
And, in case you were wondering, she is the one Pixar animators named the little fish terrorizing girl Darla in Finding Nemo after.
Rae and Anderson started dating in 2001 around the time of Monsters, Inc. and got eloped in 2004 much to the chagrin of their families and friends who wanted to attend. Anderson told San Francisco Gate, "We just didn’t anticipate what a big deal it was going to be to be part of history that way. I remember Steve Jobs was mad. He said, 'I can’t believe you didn’t invite Laurene and I to come down to City Hall to be with you guys.'" The couple did get married again once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriages to be legal in 2008.
One of the secrets to their successful marriage has been to not work on the same picture at the same time. "It’s hard enough making one of these giant movies, and you put your heart and souls into them," Anderson told SF Gate. "If we carried too much of that at home, we would just turn into animated characters ourselves."