Cars On The Road is an upcoming spinoff series set in Disney Pixar’s Cars franchise, which starts streaming on Disney+ Hotstar on 8 September 2022.

The series follows Lightning McQueen and his best friend Mater on a cross-country road trip across the United States as they journey eastward to attend a wedding for Mater’s sister. The episodes will depict the characters in various scenarios, for example, them being chased by dinosaur-like cars. It will be set in new locations with a multitude of new characters, including their new friend Ivy, a monster truck who travels with them, as well as feature returns of the already established characters from the franchise.

Owen Wilson and Larry The Cable Guy reprise their roles as Lightning McQueen and Mater, respectively. The executive producer is Pete Docter while Steve Purcell is the writer.

Courtesy of Disney+ Hotstar, we were given the opportunity to interview Larry The Cable Guy (the voice of Mater). This interview has been edited for clarity. Stay tuned for the review of the series.

How does it feel to have voiced an iconic character like Mater for close to/almost two decades now?

Larry The Cable Guy: It feels unbelievable but still not as good as being able to talk to Alleef (laughs).

No, but Alleef, it’s awesome, I pinch myself every day, I can’t believe it, I’m so excited they trusted me to voice the character and I’ll tell you what, the people love it, and it’s, man, I love doing it. And this last series that they’re gonna see on Disney Plus, Cars On The Road, it gets better and better. I mean, it is so good, and I am so happy to be a part of it.

In all these years, what would you say has been your favourite moment of voicing Mater in any of the three movies or even this series?

Larry The Cable Guy: Being able to talk to Alleef (laughs).

I gotta tell you, my favourite moment out of all of Cars, that would obviously be the one that started it all; the first, original Cars. It was so much fun. One of the coolest stories about that was the release was at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina, and we all went out to eat and I sat across from the awesome Paul Newman, and Paul Newman was a fan, and I talked to Paul Newman all night at the restaurant. He was awesome and that’s a memory I’ll never forget, but the first Cars movie was the one that started it all. It’s iconic, always will be my favourite.

(For Cars On The Road) You know, like I said, they get better and better and there’s just no exception. I knew it was going to be funny and good when I went in to do the read. It was even better than I thought. I laughed hard all through it. I mean, some of the things you laugh through and some of these, I literally bellied laugh at a lot of these scenes.

So, I think people are really going to love the humour in this and I can’t pick a favourite because they’re all good. I know some people like the haunted house and some people like the trucks. I like them all and they’re all equally well. I’m not going to pick a favourite, they’re all good. So you watch them and decide (laughs).

What is like having worked with Owen Wilson again?

Larry The Cable Guy: Owen’s a jerk, I don’t like working with him, I wish they hired somebody else. No, Owen’s awesome, man, he’s a lot of fun. He doesn’t do his own stunts though, like I do, so that’s different. Plus, I’m the only guy that puts on weight to do voiceovers. He doesn’t do that. But no, he’s fun to work with.

You know, I’ve only run into Owen Wilson in person four times but it’s almost like since we’ve been doing these characters together, it’s almost like we’ve known each other forever. He’s awesome. The cool thing about that is that when we hear each other’s voices, when we’re in doing our voices, when they read Owen’s lines for me to do my line, it’s pretty cool because I can already tell without even seeing Owen or hearing Owen what inflections that he’s using. I know which direction’s he’s going, so it makes it really easy to do my lines as well as probably easy for him to do his lines since he knows so much about how I do it. So that really helps a lot and makes it go quicker and makes for an even better read between the two of us.