In January 2006, I joined Steve Jobs in
Emeryville, California, to announce Dis-
ney’s acquisition of Pixar, the acclaimed
animation studio chaired by Steve. I
had become CEO of Disney just three
months prior, and the deal represented
an enormous opportunity—and risk—for
the company and me personally. The plan
that day was to release the announcement
after the stock market closed at 1 p.m. PT,
then hold a press conference and a town
hall meeting with Pixar’s employees.
Just after noon, Steve pulled me aside.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. I knew Steve
liked to go on long walks, frequently
with friends or colleagues, but I was
surprised at the timing and suspicious
about his request. I wondered whether
he wanted to back out of the deal or rene-
gotiate its terms.
I looked at my watch. It was 12:15. We
walked for a while and then sat on a bench
in the middle of Pixar’s beautiful, mani-
cured grounds. Steve put his arm behind
me, which was a nice, unexpected gesture.
He said, “I’m going to tell you something
that only Laurene”—his wife—“and my
doctors know.” He asked me for complete
conŽdentiality, and then he told me that
his cancer had returned.
“Steve,” I said, “why are you telling me
this now?” “I am about to become your
biggest shareholder and a member of
your board,” he said. “And I think I owe

you the right, given this knowledge, to

back out of the deal.”

It was 12:30, only 30 minutes before we

were to announce. I wasn’t sure how to

respond, and I was struggling to process

what I’d just been told, which included

asking myself whether what I now knew

would trigger any disclosure obligations.

He wanted complete conŽdentiality, so

it would be impossible to do anything

except accept his o”er and back away

from a deal I wanted badly, and we need-

ed badly. Finally I said, “Steve, in less

than 30 minutes we are set to announce

a seven-plus billion-dollar deal. What

would I tell our board, that I got cold

feet?” He told me to blame him. I then

asked, “Is there more that I need to know

about this? Help me make this decision.”

He told me the cancer was now in his

liver and he talked about the odds of

beating it. He was going to do whatever

it took to be at his son Reed’s high school

graduation, he said. When he told me that

was four years away, I felt devastated. It

was impossible to be having these two

conversations—about Steve facing his

impending death and about the deal we

were supposed to be closing in minutes—

at the same time.

I decided to reject his o”er. Even if I

took him up on it, I wouldn’t have been

able to explain why to our board, which

not only had approved it, but had endured

months of my pleas to do so. It was now 10

minutes before our release was to go out. I

had no idea if I was doing the right thing,

but I’d quickly calculated that Steve was

not material to the deal itself, although he

certainly was material to me. We walked

in silence back to the atrium. That night I

took my wife, Willow Bay, into my conŽ-

dence. Willow had known Steve for years,

since long before I knew him, and instead

of toasting what had been a momentous

day in my early tenure as CEO, we cried

together over the news. No matter what

he told me, no matter how resolved he

would be in his ™ight with cancer, we

dreaded what was ahead for him.

T

hat Steve and I were

standing on that stage

together at all was some-

thing of a miracle; before

I became CEO, Disney’s

relationship with Pixar—and Steve—

was in tatters.

In the ’90s, Disney struck a deal

to coproduce, market, and distribute

Pixar’s ™ilms, starting with the enor-

mously successful Toy Story, the world’s

Žrst full-length digitally animated fea-

ture. Toy Story represented a seismic

creative and technological leap—and it

grossed nearly $400 million worldwide.

It was followed by A Bug’s Life in 1998 and

Monsters, Inc. in 2001. Taken together,

those three movies grossed well over a

billion dollars worldwide and established

Pixar, at a time when Disney Animation

was beginning to falter, as the future of

animation. Over the next 10 years, Dis-

ney released Žve additional Pixar Žlms,

including the hugely successful Finding

Nemo and The Incredibles.

But the relationship between Steve

and my predecessor, Michael Eisner,

started to falter. Attempts to renegoti-

ate the terms of the deal or to extend the

relationship met with failure, frustra-

tion, and rancor, and in January 2004,

Steve made a very public, in-your-face

announcement that he would never deal

with Disney again.

The end of the Pixar partnership was

a huge blow, from both a Žnancial and

a public-relations standpoint. Steve was

one of the most respected people in the

world, and his rejection and withering

criticism of Disney had been so public

that any mending of that fence would

be seen as a big early win for me as Dis-

ney’s brand-new CEO. Plus, Pixar was

now the standard-bearer in animation,

and while I didn’t yet have a complete

sense of just how broken Disney Anima-

tion was, I knew that any renewed part-

nership would be good for our business.

I also knew that chances were slim that

someone as headstrong as Steve would

be open to something. But I had to try.

I called Steve when it was announced

I would succeed Michael as CEO, and

while the call was hardly an icebreaker,

we agreed to talk down the road. Two

months later, I reached out again. My ulti-

mate goal was to somehow make things

right with Pixar, but I couldn’t ask for that

initially. Steve’s animosity toward Disney

was too deep-rooted.

I had an unrelated idea, though, that I

thought might interest him. I told him I

was a huge music lover and that I had all

of my music stored on my iPod, which I

used constantly. I’d been thinking about

the future of television, and believed

it was only a matter of time before we

would be accessing TV shows and movies

on our computers. I didn’t know how fast

I

Adapted from The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons
in Creative Leadership by Robert Iger,
published September 23, 2019 by Bantam
Press. Copyright © 2019 by Robert Iger.

132 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019

PAGES 130–31: PHOTOGRAPH BY KIMBERLY WHITE/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES