[Copied here because the site’s formatting is hard to read. I agree with every word. I celebrate the embodiment of the Muppet Performers. The muppets worked because they were conscious and careful creations, presenting extreme and elemental aspects of the artists within. Treating them like commodities isn’t just “not as good;” I think it is, as Miyazaki said about AI, an insult to life itself.
We are beset by body snatchers and semantic thieves. If The Muppets are detached entirely from their origins, with no opportunity for new performers to build community and inherit the legacy directly, then The Muppets are dead.
Long live The Muppets.]
stevewhitmire.website
Steve Whitmire
January 9, 2026
Ten years ago I published a statement saying that I wanted Muppet fans to be “the smartest fans in the world”. I want this for you all because you already have a connection to the Muppets and I think you should at least be given the opportunity to gain even deeper insights as to why that attraction might be waning now.
I see literally thousands of comments, and receive as many messages and emails, from people like you, people who sense that Kermit the Frog as we know him no longer exists. In both cases most are from casual viewers rather than from deeply devoted Muppet fans. The public at large is sensing that something has gone wrong. I am told that within the circle of Disney Muppet performers all of these people are written off as being “haters”, and are ignored. But the vast majority of the comments and messages I see aren’t hateful, they are discerning. After a decade to adjust, what is before them obviously doesn’t work, and ignoring the problem only increases it.
There are an awful lot of fans who think that as long as something green with ping-pong ball eyes hops around on screen it constitutes Kermit the Frog. Further, sentiments are expressed essentially saying that ‘something is better than nothing’…what a sad fate for Jim henson’s most well known alter ego. I love all the fans, but with respect, on these couple of points you are wrong. Kermit is the spoke in the middle of the Muppet wheel around which all things Muppet revolve, and without Kermit being fully intact there is no future for the Muppets – no new directions, no exploitative ’reboots’, no future.
Having been asked innumerable times for my opinions on the topic, what follows is for those discriminating enough to care that something is awry.
In the 1960’s a band called “The Buggs” was literally manufactured to copy the Beatle’s iconic sound by recording cover versions of their music. A few years later, Alan Haney became known as being the original Elvis impersonator, again performing the songs and impersonating the voice. Many others followed throughout the decades copying the work and style of many other groups. The list of so-called ‘tribute bands’ goes on and on…
None of these ‘tribute acts’ claimed to be the actual thing. There was no attempt to make the public believe that what they were seeing and hearing was the genuine article, the actual people, themselves. All lacked the depth and creative spark that brought about the respective phenomena in the first place. Without the bonafide original having_created a connection with the audience*_these tribute bands are no more than impressionistic copy-cats opportunistically garnering attention by pretending to be representative of something of immeasurable value.
And so we find ourselves in a world where, when we look at the Muppets, what is before us is, essentially, a tribute band. The difference? They are claiming to be authentic, and you are expected to believe that.
Let me explain more:
I first became acquainted with Kermit the Frog in the mid-1960’s as he originally began to appear as a character. He was no longer the anonymous abstract ‘thing’ Jim Henson created, but had become a frog who was developing a distinct, individual persona supplied in an ongoing way from a single individual performer*. That individuality was the basis for his achieving a connection with you, the audience, as it allowed him to evolve in a consistent and anticipated fashion over more than two decades.
The expectation of who he had become was the result of the character being the extension of a specific performer. When Kermit spoke it had the gravitas of a direct connection with the artist underneath, and once established, alterations to replace the source (Jim Henson, in this case) were literally unacceptable.
The methodology of characters emanating from one specific performer applies to all of the core Muppets.
I think we can all agree that the most devastating occurrence in the history of the Muppets was Jim’s unexpected death in 1990. Even if you weren’t around during that timeframe – trust me – it was devastating. Someday, I’ll tell you all about our last conversation in which he discussed with me our plans for going forward. But for now I want you all to understand that there was a second devastating and insidious turn of events that began to take hold in addition to losing Jim: the commodification of the Muppets without the wisdom and guidance of their creator.
Technically, the Muppet characters began to be a commodity prior to Jim’s death. Since it was necessary to assign a monetary value to them to facilitate the sale of the company to Disney, their worth had to be measured in dollar signs. But their was a stipulation: Jim’s intent was for the characters to continue to be performed by their original performers indefinitely. This particular methodology would preserve the individuality of each character allowing them to continue to evolve just as they had for years prior while maintaining their individual relationships with the fans. The rejection of this fundamental core principle within the Muppets during the negotiations of the sale was a large part of why Jim was having second thoughts about his decision to sell to Disney.
The Muppets becoming a brand to be bought and sold brought about what I believe to be the most devastating thing to damage the Muppets in their history_outside of Jim’s death: the wholly objective corporate approach of treating the characters as ‘_roles to be portrayed by actors who audition‘ rather than to continue to view them as ‘direct extensions of artistic expression from specific individual originative performers‘*.
Viewing the Muppets as ‘roles’ began as soon as Jim was gone, and changed the perception from seeing them as individual entities who exist in our own world to being a corporate owned puppet character franchise with people hired to play them, an exterior/objective way of viewing them rather than an interior/subjective approach.
This serves multiple purposes for corporate owners, but at the top of their list is that if bringing the Muppets to life is as simple as auditioning for them whenever you like, you are never beholden to respect a designated performer. The non-creative temporal executives in charge can hire and fire at will those who would otherwise be committed for life under the guise of ‘it’s just a role played by a hired hand’. This is clearly a partial truth (like many purely objective corporate truths…) that ignores the ‘interior/subjective’ importance of how the deep connection with you, the audience, came about in the first place (i.e., it’s not about a little green puppet, it’s about your expectation of who you have grown to care about).
Once it became the standard for on-going established characters who are well known by the fans to be recast in cattle call auditions, the true subjective ‘art of the Muppets’ began to disappear for all time. Now, many of the top tier Muppets are based upon a list of cliche traits observed in YouTube videos. They lack the depth of character upon which they were originated, and even worse, what we recognize is replaced by new ‘interpretations’. They still do the same old stories using the same old jokes and sight gags, but with no legitimate evolution**. That’s because there are no new ideas for them, only surface observations made by owners, producers, and performers, that view them objectively, from the outside, rather than from the core of the character’s subjective hearts and minds, with any direct access to the original sources having been eliminated.
Enter a big, shiny reboot of “The Muppet Show” just around the bend, an idea I pitched multiple times from 2010 forward only to see it entirely ignored. But I had very specific reasons for proposing bringing back the series at that juncture. My reasons for placing the Muppets in their original surroundings was to give a new ensemble of Muppet Performers a familiar place to hone their historical knowledge of the characters they had been gifted while they had access to the people who were there in the days of origin, and at a point with Kermit twenty years intact.
But make no mistake, this is a ‘Hail Mary’ right out of the Disney playbook used when nothing else is working – garner attention from the press by bringing in a recognizable Hollywood name to produce, and place the characters in a setting so familiar that their lack of depth and traditional logic is more likely to go unnoticed (think “The Muppets” in 2011). You will see this tactic of using the “star name” again and again (although I do believe that Seth Rogan is likely a good choice to be a show runner for a Muppet project if only he had access to characters still operating with a basis in Jim’s influence).
I have also been told that the hope of top performers is that after ten years this new Muppet Show reboot can be used by them to “prove” that by marketing them in front of the red curtains you will believe that they are providing faithful versions of the characters. The expectation is that you, the viewers, have forgotten Jim and his influence – and maybe you have. But there categorically can not be a faithful continuation of something as unique and established as “The Muppet Show” without Kermit fully intact at the top of the pyramid, and even then servicing the other core characters is an uphill climb.
So, at this point, I urge those of you who are savvy enough to see beyond the hype to gain the deepest possible understanding of all that Jim brought to the uniqueness of his characters that will be ignored for all time. I don’t hate Disney executives, or the Hensons, or Matt, and this new/old conceit might make you laugh, but lets be clear that this is the product of treating the Muppets as WHAT they are rather than as WHO they are, and it leaves us all with a result that doesn’t faithfully approach the magic and integrity of the original.
With no one in charge to provide a balance of knowledge about the origins, and the Muppets viewed as ‘roles to be played’, the door is wide open for a highly visible and recognizable soul like Kermit (as well as all the rest) to be changed at a whim. As is standard in any production, from Broadway roles to franchise movie characters, different performers stepping into any role commonly bring their own interpretations in order to ‘make it their own’, evidently a stated goal within the Muppets of today.
But I want you all to know that from day one throughout nearly three decades not once did I ever have the notion to ‘make Kermit my own’ – on the contrary. It was absolutely vital in my process to make certain that any egotistical notion of ‘marking territory’ never happened so that Kermit remained based solely upon Jim’s foundational original*. There is no other way for what I consider to be a living, breathing persona to stay consistently convincing as it evolves.
This differs entirely from the present-day recasting process. I think what bothers me the most is the presumption that altering the qualities that you, as fans, have connected with for decades is somehow acceptable and desirable when a new performer is incapable of stepping into the role in an evolutionary fashion. My standard analogy is that the Muppets are treated like a box of Crayons for the next person executives select to use for drawing and coloring their own picture. It is as though producers and performers who never sat in the same space as we did with Jim are somehow qualified to redefine what Jim and the rest originated. It’s nothing less than sheer hubristic arrogance.
Trust me – what was conceived and put forth in the late 1970s was not only ‘good enough’ to remain the basis to allow the Neo-Muppets to have jobs today, it was the biggest phenomena on the planet. At its core, none of it is in need of re-imagining.
The word “channeling” gets thrown around a lot these days. I often see the term used to indicate that someone is somehow receiving some sort of divine inspiration from someone else who has moved on or died, an originator of something whose torch is now represented by them. I take the word channeling very seriously, and I am very aware that when I was tasked with carrying on Kermit my first and biggest challenge was to fully inhabit him in the exact same way that Jim did to the best of my ability.
To whatever extent I was able to preserve the core of Kermit, that ability did, indeed, rely upon so-called ‘channeling’ of all that I knew from within an interpersonal relationship with Jim*. Without having had that direct relationship, no amount of calling my objective opinions “channeling” would have netted anything of integrity where Kermit is concerned.
To put it simply, I can attest that it is simply not possible to inhabit a character as well known and recognizable as Kermit just because you might be the most dedicated of fans and have watched countless old videos of what the originator did prior. With a definitive soul like Kermit, you know him when you’re with him just as you’d know a parent, your spouse, or a close friend, and having looked him in the eyes for decades, so do I.
If someone walks into the room wearing your best friend’s favorite shirt and talking in their general register with their accent you will still instantly know that person is not who you have come to know. It cannot be stressed enough – it is vital to the Muppets that those who write for them, produce their projects, and perform them, view every aspect, every small detail, of what effects them through the eyes of the characters, themselves, by treating them as though they are living, breathing souls*. But first, you have to have fidelity.
A very important part of my process was to try and falsify any notion that came into my mind about Jim in the tradition of Karl Popper before applying it to Kermit*. That simply means that I made no assumptions about what Jim did or who Jim was. I put any educated hunches through vigorous examination to find examples and data to either confirm the idea, or rule it out. If one is to actually achieve an internal realization of another person’s psyche, this is an extremely vital endeavor using actual data based on direct knowledge of that originator as a sort of ‘checks and balances’ methodology. Otherwise, self policing one’s own opinions will not magically make an opinion truth.
Once and for all, folks, the Muppets as originally created are defined by ‘WHO they are, not WHAT they are’ (somebody make a T-shirt…). A character like Kermit does not function with multiple performers, as versions, or as new interpretations, either simultaneously or even subsequently. Treating The Muppets as roles is inaccurate because unlike ordinary fictional characters who live entirely in their own screen world, the Muppets are both the characters and the actors within their films. As actors, they maintain a functioning existence in our own real world just as any other actor does often appearing as themselves both live and in television interviews.
He’s not George Clooney vs. Val Kilmer vs. Michael Keaton as Batman because there is no living person going on “Good Morning America” claiming to be “Batman”, an actual individual entity in this world who goes home after the interview. Batman is an onscreen role – Kermit is a tangible present-day individual in this world, a fully realized persona with a personal lifelong history no different than that of anyone you know in your day-to-day life. You are seeing the effect of all that having disintegrated.
Who He Is is established and can not be subject to ‘he’s doing the best he can’, or debates over one “version” vs. another “version” any more than who YOU are can be. It’s either Kermit or it isn’t. At a point when the audience is debating versions of Kermit, there is no longer Kermit to debate.
I have said many times in the past that I believe those of us who gave life to the Muppets were in a sort of partnership with the audience that allows them to be brought to life. The majority of the responsibility is on performers, but without an audience willing to suspend their disbelief their connection to the Muppets would not exist.
So you say you have trouble with the voice? Let me tell you, what is missing is a far greater loss than a voice. Virtually everything of Jim that he put into Kermit – his thought processes and timing, certain southernisms and expressions, quirks and affectations, historical references and contextual background, that slight indignant inquisitiveness, his general outlook and life philosophy, that old-fashioned understated and uneasy equanimity when things are going very wrong while still accepting it for what it is – all things that had to be observed to be understood and implemented, all things that I made sure were kept alive at the core of Kermit – GONE – gone for good.
But perhaps the most devastating loss of all is that there is no longer a linear basis for us to ever find out the truth of what Kermit would and should be doing next. Without Kermit continuing to be the vessel of Jim‘s influence, we have lost Jim for all time, just as without Jim‘s influence continuing within Kermit he is lost, as well.
And while you’re rolling that thought over in your mind, take time to remember the list of those people claiming to protect Jim’s legacy who put this plan into action, and who supported it, both wholeheartedly and tacitly.
I served with Kermit. I know Kermit. Kermit was a friend of mine. Folks, that green frog puppet is no Kermit. His heart and soul are here with me…
*Key points in my process of establishing Jim Henson’s origination as the core foundational element of Kermit after Jim’s death.
**Evolution is best defined as the process of ‘transcending and including_‘_previous stages. For that to take place within character development, it is vital for those previous foundational stages to be fully known and understood.
