Director Kelsey Mann, producer Mark Nielsen, writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein and composer Andrea Datzman sat down with Clayton Davis, Variety’s Senior Awards Editor, at the Variety FYC Screening presented by Disney & Pixar, to chat about their work on “Inside Out 2.”

The billion-dollar animated hit “Inside Out 2” introduces an older Riley, now age 13, as she enters high school and discovers a new set of emotions including Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). As a director, Mann was drawn in to how universal the experience of being a teenager is: “It’s always this thing that everybody kind of knows about.”

For “Inside Out 2,” Mann assembled an advisory group of teenage girls ages 13 to 16 to give their thoughts on every version of the film. While Mann imagined having to really sell Pixar on it, he recalls how open they were to the idea.