Voice-over actress Anna Vocino earned her first big break by being a chipmunk. But that was 20 years ago, and she’s graduated to bigger things. Now she’s a potato.

It’s not just ANY potato that Vocino is imitating. It’s the knobby Mrs. Potato Head co-starring in “Toy Story 5,” opening in theaters Friday.

Vocino was happy lending her vocals to commercials like Ford, McDonalds, Subaru, Nike, Pillsbury, and yes, even Bud Light. She’s provided dialogue on shows like “The Office,” “Celebrity Death Match,” and is the snippy narrator on Oxygen’s “Snapped: Killer Couples.”

But when her agent called to say they wanted her for a movie for Pixar, she was sure she was going to record the temporary tracks. It’s called “scratching” and she explains: “They want to do mockups in the animated world so there'll be an animated movie that's a big-budget movie, and they'll bring in journeyman actors like myself to scratch-track the roles.

“When it's time to do the movie, they'll bring in the person who got the role to re-record it. The good thing about scratching is that generally they'll give you a smaller role in the movie like Car No. 3, or the nosy neighbor, or something like that — they'll let you do those things.”

Doing those things didn’t start big for Vocino who launched her career in improv, co-founding an improv-comedy theater in Atlanta, performing improvisations at Emory University, and easing into stand-up comedy.

She and her husband of 27 years still perform stand-up routines. “We decided to start doing a dual act together about marriage because one piece of advice I would give is probably, ‘If you're a stand-up, don't marry another stand-up.’ But we did. It's not an easy life but we did it and raised a daughter. And so we do a ‘he-said-she-said’ dual-act about long-term relationships.”

Though Vocino was comfy with her squawk-box of voices and choices, the Pixar assignment proved a whole new ballgame. The original Mrs. Potato Head was voiced by Estelle Harris, who died four years ago. Pixar decided not to retire the characters Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but to feature the two devoted tubers in the latest “Toy Story.” “Jeff Bergman is replacing Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head,” says Vocino, “the late great Don Rickles. I mean, these two people were legends, and we have big shoes to fill.”

Thrilled by the opportunity to squeeze into those shoes, Vocino says she was also intimidated. “I had to do a massive deep-dive and just try to embody everything that's hilarious, and the way that she talks is so iconic, and just such a fabric of who she was.”

Vocino has been imitating famous voices for a long time. “I think it's having a background in singing and in music I've been able to voice-match a lot of celebrities over the years, in tiny little things.

“I mean in big projects. For example, they can't get Kate Winslet in to do the voice-matching for additional dialogue replacement in that movie ‘Divergent.’ So I come in and I voice-match and they'll do it so specifically where they punch in certain phrases or even a word or a monologue.

I’ve done it for Marisa Tomei. I've done it for Helena Bonham Carter. I've done it for Kirsten Dunst, a ton of celebrities, and it's a great little career thing because I get a contract on a movie, and I get residuals off of it, but I don't necessarily get a credit or anything like that. This (“Toy Story 5”) is very high profile. It's very different.”

Different from the chipmunk, all right, which she executed for the soap, “The Young and the Restless.” “The storyline is Kevin (played by Greg Rikaart) devolved into this Patty Hearst murder spree, or something happens, and he loses his mind,” she recalls.

“And he starts visualizing, everybody he talks to turns into a chipmunk. I was the voice of the chipmunk. And I sound like a broken-down Bart Simpson. They wind it up by putting effects on it to make it sound crazy and demonic. It was honestly hilarious and Greg played it so well.”

From then on Vocino was hooked. “I think what I really love about the art of voice-over is that you get to be in a room in the dark and get to do your funny voices or bring something to life without having the pressure of having the camera on you. So for me, it was very freeing to be able to do voice-over. I felt less self-conscious.”

She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue her new passion. “I got very serious,” she remembers. “‘It's time. I’m in the big city now. I need to get serious. I need to get a coach. I need to get a demo produced.’ And I just always, I always LOVED it.”

‘Power Book’ plugs in its final season

“Power Book III: Raising Kanan” is streaming its fifth and final season over on Starz. With a passel of celebs including Tony Danza, Mekai Curtin and Leslie Grossman, the series follows the exploits of Kanan Stark, who has plunged into the drug pool.

Sascha Penn, the show’s creator, explains, “It's always a high-wire act, a fifth season, a final season. You want to make sure that you get it right, and you want to make sure that, again, that you've sort of earned the energy and attention of your viewers, of your fans. And I think we have. I really do.”

Penn admits that the author’s personal life always intrudes on the script. “There's pieces of me all over five seasons of ‘Raising Kanan,’” he says. “Did I run a crack empire? No, but I've been a father. I've been a son. I've experienced tragedy. I've experienced loss. I've had success. So that's the stuff that we do. And when you can get that, that's when the real sort of magic happens.”

Janney plays grieving widow in HBO Max film

Allison Janney is known for her trunk full of colorful characters — from the efficient U.S. press secretary in “The West Wing” to the recovering addict in the sitcom, “Mom.” Now she’s streaming in the film “Miss You, Love You” via HBO Max. Here she plays a grieving widow forced to plan her husband’s funeral with a stranger.

Grief and emotions are essentials in the film, but, as Janney explains, “I come from a family that doesn’t talk about things. We talk about ‘Pass the peas,’ ‘Do this,’ but nobody talks about what’s going on. So, I understand that very well, and it’s been hard for me to realize I have to be able to have someone to talk to, someone to have a connection, someone to talk about the stuff underneath of what I’m feeling. And I discovered that in my own life, that’s very important to my growth as an artist, as a person. So, I had got into therapy.

“And giving advice, I find the hardest,” she continues. “I’m a good listener; I like to ask people what’s wrong. People feel like they can open up around me a lot — I think I feel that way in my life and ‘Just tell me what you need to tell me. I’m a good listener.’”

Jim Rash, creator and director of the piece, says he got the idea when he attended his dad’s funeral. “Your most vulnerable place is grief,” he says. “But, at the same time, there’s always this hovering desire to laugh – ‘Someone, please.’ And it could be something we feel; it has to be so serious. But all of a sudden, something humorous happens that breaks it out. Because the person who has left most likely would prefer that we’re laughing and enjoying and celebrating and all the things that we try to get back to.”

3 new 'Simpsons' on deck at Disney+

After 800 episodes you’d think they wouldn’t need any more, but three new “Simpsons” episodes will be arriving on Disney+ starting Wednesday, June 17. This first one, “Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition,” is a double banger in which Marge and Homer take a night off. But when she learns that Homer has left the kids at home with only a doorbell camera to watch them, the tipsy Marge invents a trilogy of alternate Homers more to her liking.

Dan Castellaneta, who plays the hapless Homer, tells me, “I’m an introvert, therefore acting is a way to sort of come out and connect with people and be safe. You can say, ‘It’s not me it’s just another character’ even though it is,” he says.

“I remember when I was a kid my mother knew I liked to play-act, and one summer I had to go to summer school to take a reading class, and she thought to make it fun for me she enrolled me in a drama class. Then I did a production of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and played the Mock Turtle, and it turned out that I got such a great reception that it was like, ‘Wow, I could do this!’”

Two more new entries follow with “Simpsley” (with an Italian touch) on July 3 and a Simpson noir, “Yellow Mirror,” Aug. 26. All exclusively on Disney+.

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