Miss Piggy's 'a mess inside': Frank Oz and puppeteer pals reveal Muppet secrets
Frank Oz poses with Muppets Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy in August 1977. (Photo: Mirrorpix/Courtesy Everett Collection)
A conversation with the âMuppet guysâ is not like a conversation with other people. During a roundtable interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Fran Brill, and Bill Barretta spoke thoughtfully and fondly about their experiences creating and performing Jim Hensonâs Muppets. At the same time, these friends speak a language all their own, a playful cacophony of gestures, jokes, character voices, one-upmanship, and riffs on their shared memories. Itâs something that really needs to be experienced to be understood â but you donât have to take my word for it.
Ozâs documentary Muppet Guys Talking (available March 16 exclusively at MuppetGuysTalking.com) gives Muppet fans the chance to pull up a chair and enjoy a casual, intimate conversation between the longtime colleagues. The filmâs participants include director Oz (performer of Fozzie Bear, Bert, Cookie Monster, Missy Piggy, Animal, Grover), who was Hensonâs closest collaborator during his lifetime; Goelz (The Great Gonzo, Bunsen Honeydew, Traveling Matt, Boober Fraggle, Beauregard), who started out as a puppet maker and became a principal performer; Brill (Prairie Dawn, Zoe, Little Bird), one of the few original female performers on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show; Barretta (Pepe the King Prawn, Bobo the Bear, Big Mean Carl), who began performing with the Muppets in the â90s and now plays several of Hensonâs characters, including Rowlf and Dr. Teeth; and Jerry Nelson (Count von Count, Snuffleupagus, Emmett Otter, Robin), a longtime Muppeteer who died in 2012 after a long illness. Muppet Guys Talking was produced and conceived by Ozâs wife Victoria Labalme, who saw in the Muppet performersâ relationship something that deserved to be captured on film.
Watch a trailer for âMuppet Guys Talking.â
In the first part of our interview with the Muppet guys, the four performers reveal their secrets for getting into character, including what theyâre doing underneath the floorboards while the Muppets are above their heads. Oz tells us the one word he needs to say to become Bert, and Baretta explains the facial expression that makes the difference between Dr. Teeth and Rowlf.
The performers also talk about how their characters have changed over time, particularly Miss Piggy, who Frank describes as âsuch a mess inside.â Brill speaks about her experience being the only woman working on the Muppets, occasionally taking on characters who were âkind of chauvinistic⊠but funny.â The friends discuss the hazardous situations they sometimes put themselves in for the sake of the Muppets, whether it was Oz lighting his arm on fire for a commercial or Goelz working his Fraggle Rock character from inside a landfill. Finally, Oz details the perfectionism that made him put his friends âthrough hellâ on Muppets Take Manhattan â and opens up about how he used to sabotage Sesame Street takes.
Read on for the full conversation and stay tuned for Part 2, in which the Muppet guys share their memories of Jim Henson.
Yahoo Entertainment: Tell me, Frank and Victoria, what made you want to make this particular film with these particular people.
Frank Oz: I donât know anybody else!
Dave Goelz: He has no other friends.
Fran Brill: Certainly no one who would agree to do it.
Oz: It was all because of Victoria. I wanted to do it in the beginning because I wanted to give these guys their due â people donât know these guys. But then Victoria made me realize there was a larger reason.
Victoria Labalme: I think itâs very rare in todayâs society to see this kind of spirit of collaboration, of playfulness, of professionalism mixed with fun, of a sense of real respect and listening to each other and bringing the best out in each other. And I thought that should be shared with the world.
Goelz: Well yeah, weâre living in a cynical time here. The whole culture is more cynical than it was then. And I think part of wanting to do this is to talk about that innocence and the way that it brings out more in people, creates a safe environment and spurs creativity. And life is better.
The âMuppet Guys Talkingâ poster features the hands of performers Bill Barretta, Fran Brill, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, and Frank Oz (Photo: Vibrant Mud)
The Muppet Guys Talking poster is just your hands, in position as if youâre working puppets. When I hold up my hand, itâs just a hand. But when you do it, the hand is alive. What are you thinking when you hold up that hand?Â
Oz: As soon as I put my hand up, Iâm observing.
You also talked a little in the movie about how when you have the puppet up top and youâre beneath the floorboards, you do a lot of overacting to create small reactions in the puppet. Are there habits you have with the characters that nobody sees, movements with your face or body while youâre under the shot?
Goelz: Sure, we make these ridiculous expressions. One of my favorite things to do is always to stand in front of Frankâs monitor and mirror his face.
Oz: I wouldnât want people watching me, because then Iâm self-conscious and I canât perform.
Goelz: Thatâs exactly what used to happen. I would mirror your expression and you would lose it, and weâd have to do another take.
Dr. Teeth, performed by Jim Henson, sings âCan You Picture That?â with The Electric Mayhem in âThe Muppet Movieâ (1979). Drummer Animal was performed by Frank Oz, bassist Floyd by Jerry Nelson, and saxophonist Zoot by Dave Goelz.Â
Barretta: One thing I learned, actually â when I first started doing Dr. Teeth, Dave brought up that when he would watch Jim perform Dr. Teeth, he would do this [grimace smiles] kind of through his teeth.
Goelz: As much of a smile as he could get. He would just strain at it.
Barretta: And it also creates a sound quality thatâs different from a character with a similar voice, like Rowlf.
Oz: Also itâs important physically. Animal is always [grinning and doing Animal] âwiiiideâ, so I gotta be always wide. It depends on the size of the mouth.
Goelz: And that comes from the puppet.
Zoe, performed by Fran Brill, was introduced to âSesame Streetâ in 1993.
Brill: With Zoe, she was designed like a football, with a very wide mouth, so I tried to do a Carol Channing thing â [Carol Channing voice]Â âbecause Carol Channing talks like thatâ â and I tried, and I tried, and it just was very forced and didnât feel like it was coming from me. But I think I usually take my cue from, what does that puppet look like and what is the mouth doing?
Barretta: Also, I think a lot of times weâre using our arms to make them walk and move in a certain way. I walk a lot in place. Like if Iâm doing Bobo, you know, [does Bobo, walking in place]Â : when Iâm walking I kind of do this thing under there, because heâs very stiff in his neck and then I turn this way a little bit â but my whole body is doing it down there, hoping it translates.
Goelz: Yeah, Bobo canât turn his head.
Barretta: [Doing Bobo]Â âWhatâs goinâ on back there?â
Goelz: Itâs a weakness in the puppet that becomes a strength in the character. That limitation is fun.
Bobo the Bear, performed by Bill Barretta, and Beauregard, performed by Goelz, in a âMuppet Musingsâ sketch from 2011.
Frank, you talk in the film about having a âlockâ for the character, a certain sound that you make to get into Grover. Is that something that you have for all of your characters?Â
Oz: Â I havenât worked with them for so many years, but I did with Grover, I did with Bert â
Goelz: What was Bertâs?
Brill: I was just going to ask.
Oz:  Yelling âErnieâ like Costello would be yelling for Abbott. [As Bert] âErnieeee!âÂ
Bert, originally performed by Oz, and Ernie, originally performed by Jim Henson, on âSesame Street.â
Is that something the rest of you do or did?
Barretta: I growl for Dr. Teeth a little bit.
Oz: Â You do that normally anyway.
Goelz: I think it happens in the early stages of a character more than later, because later itâs reflexive. A couple years ago I did a character, a new one called Chip the IT Guy, and I had a little key phrase for him. It was [as Chip] Â âIâll figure it out.â And I always went back to that when I was trying to figure out who the heck he was, for the whole season I was trying to develop the character. And I was also trying to surprise myself all the time. There were a lot of times when he was startled by somebody and he had to react, and I made a point of not planning it and just doing something on the spur of the moment. As opposed to creating the character in my head, I just thought, what would happen if I just try to live it? And make a stupid reaction, a ridiculous reaction, and not know what itâs going to be? I had a lot of fun doing that.
Chip the IT Guy, performed by Goelz, introduces himself on the half-hour ABC comedy âThe Muppetsâ (2015-2016).
Brill: I think as soon as I get my hand in a puppet that I do all the time, and I see her on camera, everything is right there immediately: the voice, who she is, how she stands, everything. With a new character, Iâm sort of learning as I do it. Like waiting for the puppet to tell me okay, she stands like this. Itâs sort of discovering who she is at that moment. I think it just becomes instinct, like most jobs after a while.
Dave Goelz, Fran Brill, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Bill Barretta in a still from âMuppet Guys Talkingâ (Photo: Vibrant Mud)
The characters that all of you have played for a long time â do you find that those characters have changed with you?
Brill: Prairie Dawn was my first real principal character. I was handed this little puppet, and she was supposed to be very, very sweet. But that was very boring to me, to just be very passive and sweet all the time. So she got a little stronger over the years. But with Zoe, there was nothing. No drawing. They just wanted somebody who would be a buddy of Elmo. And that was much more difficult, because there was nothing to look at visually for me where I would come up with a character. But I went around and I watched other three-year-olds, because they wanted her to be three, and seeing how they acted, how they moved, how they talked, and came up with some catchphrases that at least gave me some basis, like [as Zoe] âDonât joke me!â But they both changed, of course. The more I got to know who they were, the more they changed, if that makes any sense.
Prairie Dawn, performed by Brill, on âSesame Street.â
Barretta: Pepe was written at first â he was supposed to be this guy who just wanted to be in show business but had a language barrier. But then over time, I donât know how it happened, he just became this kind of ladiesâ prawn, you know? He was very much into the women. And then women seemed to respond to him for whatever reason.
Brill: The accent. Has to be the Latin accent.
Pepe the King Prawn, performed by Barretta, in scenes from âMuppets in Spaceâ (1999)
Barretta: And I think heâs blunt, and he cuts through a lot of the crap. Now heâs much more confident and just loves his life, because heâs got women all over the world. He can go to any city and he has a place to stay. So yeah, he changed over time.
Goelz: Weâve done some of these characters for a long time, itâs like 40 years, so thereâs also the element of trying to keep them interesting. And keeping them interesting to us means finding new wrinkles, new nuances to their character. With Bunsen Honeydew, he started out to be kind of a guy who misses the big picture because heâs so specific, and over the years Iâve added a lot of joy to him. He just loves the specificity so much, that I find ways to amuse myself with that while weâre shooting things.
Bunsen Honeydew, performed by Goelz, in a Muppet Labs sketch from âThe Muppet Showâ (1976-1981).
If I were thinking about, from a viewerâs perspective, which Muppet changed the most over time, I would say Miss Piggy.Â
Oz: Yeah, probably so. But Piggy is a different situation. Iâve said this before: her beginnings were in the womenâs liberation movement, just by accident. And I donât consciously change things, but the characters donât interact with the world â I interact with my world. And I donât interact in such a way where I say, âOh, Iâve got to put that in my character.â I think because of the zeitgeist, it just kind of happens without me knowing it. But Piggyâs a little different. Piggy is such a mess inside, that I think as the years go on, she gets more and more emotional baggage. And thatâs mainly why she changes. She keeps being rejected by the frog. She keeps trying and cannot do the things that she wants to, like tell jokes or dance. So I think she has this emotional baggage that hurts her more and more and more, and as a result she covers more and more and more. Thatâs what I think.Â
Thereâs something Dave says in the film, and, Frank, you used it in the trailer: âTo create a character, I find a flaw in myself, amplify it, and try to make it lovable.â
Oz: Â And by the way, Muppet Guys Talking is great because I never knew that! We found out about these things we didnât know.
Goelz: I have an endless supply of characters.
Well itâs interesting because you think of these characters as lovable, but hearing you guys talk, some of them really come from this place of pain.Â
Oz: If not pain, seriousness. If youâre coming from a funny place, youâre screwed. Itâll never be funny.
Barretta: For me they have to be rooted in reality first, grounded so that theyâre real to me. And then things can come on top of that to make them silly or fun or crazy. And actually, Frank gave me a note â and I donât remember when it was, but Frank had told me to be very specific about the characterâs background, where they come from, where they live, what kind of jobs theyâve had. Just very, very specific things about their life to create that backstory that only you need to know. But it feeds opportunities or scenes or whatever youâre doing with them.
Oz: And there are characters like Animal whoâs just two-dimensional.
Barretta: Carl is one who doesnât change or grow.Â
Big Mean Carl, performed by Barretta, on âMuppets Tonightâ (1996).
Fran, I want to ask you about being a woman â
Brill: You cannot answer that question!
Oz: I apologize, Iâm sorry.
Itâs funny that Frank jumped in because as Miss Piggy, he was the main female character on the Muppets.Â
Goelz: Had to have it all.
So this was pretty much the norm when I was growing up: Iâd watch shows and most of the characters would be boys, who were defined by different traits â the smart one, the silly one, the leader â and then thereâd be one girl who was defined by being the girl. The Muppets certainly have more nuance than that, but they also were a group of characters with very few women and very few female puppeteers. So Fran, what was it like for you coming into that dynamic?
Brill: It honestly never occurred to me that, oh, Iâm the only female here. It really didnât. They just needed a girl, so I just became another person who became a puppeteer who was doing the female [characters]. I didnât feel a weight of responsibility of being all things to all women or anything like that. I remember, I guess it was on Muppet Show, where I had to be one of these â I call them the âta-da women,â who go âTa-daaa!â And I thought, yeah, this is kind of chauvinistic, it may not be PC â but it was a funny character. And they dressed her kind of sexy or whatever, and all she ever did was go, âTa-daaa!â But I had a lot of fun doing that kind of a character. You can do so much with puppets that you canât really do as an adult or an actress. You can get away with murder just being as stupid as you possibly can be, because it amuses you, and then hopefully it amuses everybody else. Iâve never thought about it before, but I donât think I could do a character who I didnât like, or think was funny or interesting myself.
Oz: Â No, I couldnât either.
Jerry Nelson and Bill Barretta in a still from âMuppet Guys Talkingâ (Photo: Vibrant Mud)
But Frank, did you feel a responsibility with Miss Piggy â I remember she was on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, representing women in the workforce?
Oz: Â She was on tons of covers. She was huge. She was massive, yeah.
Miss Piggy, performed by Oz, and Kermit the Frog, performed by Henson, in âThe Great Muppet Caperâ (1981).
Did you feel a responsibility of any kind to live up to a certain ideal with her?
Oz: If one lives up to anything external as a performer, youâre screwed. Thatâs not oneâs job. That is not something that is my responsibility. My responsibility is to entertain and perform the script with my fellow performers and try to bring that alive. After that, itâs none of my business.
Brill: Exactly. If you thought about that, youâd get frozen. You canât say, oh, I have a responsibility for all the females who are watching.
Oz: And thatâs when things get really dull and didactic.
One of the highlights of the film is when you talk about all the insane situations that you found yourselves in, and that Jim put himself in, while performing the Muppets. Iâm wondering if you have specific memories of a moment when you went, âOh my god, I cannot believe Iâm doing this right now.â
Oz: I do. I was 20, still too frightened to do voices. But there were two characters called Wilkins and Wontkins, and they were performers for these 8-second commercial spots, and they sold things â mainly coffee. So the idea was that Wilkins says something positive about Wilkins coffee: âHey, donât you love Wilkins coffee?â And Wontkins says something negative about the coffee, and then Wilkins does something violent to him, just destroys him. The first one I saw, he blows him away with a cannon. But we were doing a lot of them, and one was Wontkins saying, âOld Man Wilkins hired me to sell his crummy coffee.â And then, this is bizarre, but a match comes in and lights Wontkins in flames, and Wilkins says, âHe just fired you, too!â So what happened was, thereâs something called cold flame that magicians use, and you can put it on your finger and light it, and it will burn. But the actual finger wonât burn, the liquid around it burns. And so I had cold flame all over my arm to protect it, and behind the stage there, I had a big bucket full of water. And on the first take he lit the match, and the whole thing went âWhoosh!â and went right down my arm, and burned all my hair off! And of course, Jim said, âOkay, take two.â
Goelz: On Fraggle Rock, we had a head writer named Jerry Juhl. He was a longtime part of the Muppets, one of the first four people. And I had a character named Traveling Matt who went out into the field every week, exploring and misunderstanding what he saw. So Jerry would sit in his office and think of things for me to do. One week I was sent out to a chicken coop, and I was in a little closed room with a dozen chickens, which is not pleasant, on the ground, lying down under a moving blanket, working this character. And Jerry is back in his office, typing something else, and just smiling and thinking, âHeâs probably in the chicken coop.â The next week I was in a little tiny pen, on the ground, next to a 700-pound sow. The zookeeper said, âIf she starts to roll? Get out.â And then I found myself at the city dump covered in garbage â Iâm covered in garbage, Matt is sitting on top of it. And then there was the roller coaster. It took 13 trips to do all the shots, and he sent me there because he knew I didnât like roller coasters. And so again, heâs sitting in his office, working on something else, going [checks his watch, chuckles].
Did you have any experiences like that on the Muppet movies?
Barretta: Driving things is always a little uncomfortable, when youâre in the front [with the puppet] and thereâs somebody driving from the back and theyâre hiding back there. And youâre not sure how well they can really see, but you have to trust them.
The hazardous taxi scene from âThe Great Muppet Caper,â featuring Henson as Kermit, Oz as Fozzie, and Goelz as Gonzo and Beauregard.Â
Goelz: In The Great Muppet Caper, there was a shot where Beauregard was driving a taxi, and Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo were in the backseat. And the car came down a city street, went around in a loop, and then went right in the front door of a hotel.
Oz: Smashed right through it.
Goelz: Broke a breakaway door. And there was a driver wearing a Beauregard suit, so he was driving and he could sort of see through the mouth, and Frank, Jim, and I were on the floor of this little Austin taxi cab â
Goelz: Well thereâs no seat, it was taken out.
Oz: I mean supposedly in the backseat.
Goelz: Yeah, and the characters were working above us. So weâre sitting right on the floorboards with a little cushion. And the door was three inches wider than the car on each side. So he had to line it up just right, or we were going to hit the side of the door and just all get crushed, because we didnât have seatbelts or anything like that. And heâs going like 25 miles an hour, doing this loop, skitting around in a circle. And he goes right in the door and he makes it â it was perfect. But Iâm just sitting back there thinking, itâs Jim and Frank and I â what happens if he clips the door?
Frank, when you directed Muppets Take Manhattan, did you end up putting anyone in mortal danger?
Goelz: He put us through hell.
Goelz: Yeah it was hell, it was different. In hell thereâs no death. Thereâs no chance of getting killed in Frankâs movie and not having to work with him anymore.
Oz: What happened was, I had co-directed Dark Crystal, which means I was learning on the job while helping Jim direct his movie. And then I shot Muppets Take Manhattan next. So that was my first movie by myself. And I thought I had to do everything myself, and I thought I had to know everything â every first-time directorâs mistake. And I was just so hard on these guys. Dave hated my guts.
Goelz: Oh, for years! Years. Still a little residual.
Oz: Because I did all my characters also. I was directing and doing my characters. And I also knew what these guys can do and what they canât do. And so I pushed them, and of course it wasnât very nice and I was an a**hole. Thatâs what happened. I put them through hell.
Brill: But you only asked for a couple of takes, right?
Oz: There was a time I was pretty intense. Very intense.
Brill: âTake 42! 43!âÂ
The opening number from âThe Muppets Take Manhattanâ (1984), directed by Oz.
Whatâs the most takes you ever remember doing?
Brill: Oh I donât remember. But Frank does that â because youâre very self-critical of anything you do.
Brill: So with a Bert and Ernie skit, or something like that, you would say, âOops, sorry, sorry guys, I didnât get that.â I sometimes thought you did that just because you wanted to do it over and over again, because you still hadnât achieved exactly what you wanted.
Oz: Oh yeah, I was terrible. The idea is, you have a playboard here [above the puppeteerâs head] and you canât see. So the worst thing to do â you canât have your head up. But if Iâm doing a lousy take, Iâm going like this. [Peeks head up from under the playboard.] It was terrible! But you could control a take that way. If I didnât want them to accept my lousy take, Iâd put my head in the shot. âOh, Iâm so sorry!â
Goelz: I worked with him for 44 years or so â this is the first time heâs admitted that.
âMuppet Guys Talkingâ is available for streaming on March 16 exclusively at MuppetGuysTalking.com.Â
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