Steve Whitmire has left the Muppets, Matt Vogel to continue as Kermit

[Cookie3001]

I know it sucks that Whitmire is gone but would you rather there be no Kermit at all?

 

[datman24]

Honestly, my complaint to all this is that we haven't really had much of Matt Vogel's Kermit in the three years since he took on the role to really see him improve. After the failure of their 2015 series, the Muppets have not really been doing much to stay active in the public eye, with the exception of a few web videos and live appearances. So far, in 2019 alone, all the Muppets have done was making four televised appearances, and that's about it. Though, I guess that can easily be contributed to the fact that many of the puppeteers have been spending much of their time and energy on Sesame Street's 50th anniversary year.

 

[MuppetSpot]

Honestly, my complaint to all this is that we haven't really had much of Matt Vogel's Kermit in the three years since he took on the role to really see him improve. After the failure of their 2015 series, the Muppets have not really been doing much to stay active in the public eye, with the exception of a few web videos and live appearances. So far, in 2019 alone, all the Muppets have done was making four televised appearances, and that's about it. Though, I guess that can easily be contributed to the fact that many of the puppeteers have been spending much of their time and energy on Sesame Street's 50th anniversary year.

That is a huge possibility and factor. Matt Vogel is Big Bird, the Count, and Mr Johnson. Eric Jacobson is Grover, Bert, Oscar, and Guy Smiley. David Rudman is Cookie and Baby Bear. Peter Linz is Ernie and Herry. Only two major Muppet performers, Bill Barretta and Dave Goelz are the only ones that don’t have Sesame obligations.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm pretty sure this is why Jim wanted to keep certain perfomers exclusive to certain entities within his organization - so that way, there would always be a decent amount of performers free and on hand to perform in a project whenever he needed them; this is why up until Jim's death, we never saw Dave or Steve perform on SS, and similarly, obligations to perform Big Bird and Oscar basically made Caroll exclusive to SS.

Honestly, this is why I feel like Matt wasn't a logistically wise choice to become Kermit's new permanent performer, given he's already got a full plate with doing Big Bird full-time now, but also taking on almost all of Jerry's characters, and even how he's far more involved behind the scenes of SS these days with directing and training new performers. Yes, Matt's an amazing and versatile performer, but he's only one in a pool of performers they could have gone through.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm gonna be honest here: I've been hearing the evolution of Matt's Kermit voice, and while I would say that he's gradually lost traces of that Constantine-esque sound in the voice, somehow I think that his Kermit voice now sounds more like an Ernie voice.

 

[LittleJerry92]

I can see why you think that.

 

[CBPuppets]

This whole thing did have me wondering, if this whole brinkman ship thing occurred prior to Disney buying the Muppets, Why wasn't Steve let go then?

 

[D'Snowth]

What still gets me is the Henson family strongly implied and inferred that recasting Kermit was "long overdue," but since when is there a certain term of how long a performer can play Kermit? Jim had performed Kermit for thirty-five years before passing away, while Steve performed him twenty-six or seven; that's still a long time, but Jim had Steve beat by nearly a decade.

 

[Bear Man]

What still gets me is the Henson family strongly implied and inferred that recasting Kermit was "long overdue," but since when is there a certain term of how long a performer can play Kermit? Jim had performed Kermit for thirty-five years before passing away, while Steve performed him twenty-six or seven; that's still a long time, but Jim had Steve beat by nearly a decade.

Well from what I remember reading they were expressing unhappiness with Whitmire’s interpretation of the characters and his off-screen behaviour. I’m not making any comment about the accuracy or lack thereof of their complaints, I’m just saying that if an individual is considered to produce substandard work or create an unpleasant working environment for a long period, it would make sense if people said “they’ve been here too long”.

 

[D'Snowth]

Maybe so, but again, as far as his performances as the character goes, that blame really lies more with the writers and directors, as even Frank has been expressing repeatedly that clearly the writers and directors Disney has been bringing in don't really understand the characters very well, and are not really giving any of the performers the freedom to have their input be heard - this is supposedly one of the things Steve was fighting for.