Jamie Foxx on what it means to voice the first black protagonist of a Pixar movie

In its 25 years of making movies, Pixar has produced 22 full-length films, including the Toy Story series, Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, and all the movies in the Cars series. While some of those movies are more about fish and monsters than humans, it’s still a little startling that it took until this year for the studio to produce a movie featuring a black protagonist.

That lead character is Joe, played in the new movie Soul by Jamie Foxx. A music teacher who dreams of a life as a wildly popular jazz musician, Joe finds his dreams—and life—interrupted when he falls into a manhole and finds himself outside his body and in a kind of purgatory. Over the course of the movie, Joe learns to love the little things that make up a complete human life, from falling leaves to a mother’s hug. For the video above, The A.V. Club talked to Foxx about the little things he loves the most, as well as what it’s like to be breaking ground in the Pixar universe.

Soul will be available exclusively on Disney+ starting on Christmas Day.