Mathew Soberman: As much as I don't want to keep relitigating Matt Vogel's Kermit, I think the disadvantage Matt has had is whereas with Steve, Kermit was still a very active character in the years following Jim's passing. Matt really hasn't gotten that chance to showcase himself.
Jarrod Fairclough: I also think as well, and this is going to sound like an awful sentence, but let me explain myself. Steve had the added
bonus that Jim had died, right?
Mathew: Yeah. You couldn't go back to the previous performer.
Jarrod: You couldn't go back. Whereas because Steve got let go and is still around and is doing convention appearances and stuff like that, there are people who go, "Well, why can't we just hire him back? You should hire him back." It's like, no, it's not quite how it works.
JD Hansel: No, not really on the table, actually.
Jarrod: It's not on the table. It's not going to happen.
JD: It would be a strange dynamic on set, I imagine. Uh which is maybe not what you want for a Muppet production or for making any production.
Gav: Steve kind of, you're right, like he kind of had that advantage where he was the recast and people knew Jim Henson died. They were like "okay, well, we either have a choice of a recast or nobody else". I think also it's different in this landscape because I've been told people also complained about Steve's Kermit when Steve started, but a lot of those complaints weren't platformed the same way that we see them now in social media comments.
JD: And also, our capacity to imagine other people being Kermit is much wider, because now there's a landscape in which you can not just see all of the angry comments. You can also see all of the people doing their own bad Kermit impressions that a lot of people think are really good. Like just flooding the internet. People who are like "Oh gee, Miss piggy", and people are like "oh my gosh, it's spot on." It's just been a big part of this recast that wasn't really a possibility before.
Jarrod: My argument is always with people who have such big things of "Steve should come back", I always say, "Do you think Steve sounded anything like Jim?" And if they say yes, I go, "Well, you and I have nothing further to discuss because we're never gonna agree." Steve did not sound like Jim at all. And I think by the end, he was just sounding like Steve. But like I said, as long as it felt like Kermit, it didn't really bother me. So yeah, Matt doesn't sound like Steve. Steve didn't sound like Jim.
JD: Okay, I have a million thoughts on that. And gosh, I should have started this conversation earlier if I was going to have it, but it's going to bug me if I don't share them now. Steve Whitmire's Kermit to a much greater degree than Matt's was in the tradition of the way that the Muppets had trained us that a Kermit kind of voice sounds. And so you can look at basically parodies of Kermit within the Muppet franchise that give you a sense of how the Muppets think about how Kermit sounds. The first one being Kermit the Pig on the Muppet Show in which Dave Goelz is doing that kind of, "Kermit the Pig here". Like he's doing that kind of "polywoggy boggy", that wet squirmy sound. And then you get to the Muppets Take Manhattan with Bill, Gil, and Jill, in which we see what a frog is like when they are not surrounded by bears and pigs and chickens with their natural frog accent. And of course, "they all talk like this". And then Muppet Babies comes out after that. And Frank Welker's Kermit is, "Hey there, baby piggy." You know, it's that kind of thing. "It's all in this sort of universe like this." And does any of that sound exactly like Kermit? No. But the Muppets over and over and over again taught us that the way that you sound like Kermit is like that. And then Steve did a voice that was as much as he possibly could be in that tradition. And I think Steve was more than being held accountable to Jim's actual voice, is held accountable to that imagined Kermit voice that everyone does impressions of. "I don't have any money, but what I do have is a very particular set of skills." That's not actually how Jim Henson's Kermit talked. It had a lot more nuances to it, but there is kind of a shared social agreement that it sounds like that. Matt Vogel does an incredible job as Kermit the Frog in so many ways, but his natural voice is not a, you know, a wet, slimy, poly, woggy, swampy, rounded sound.
Gav: I think the word you're looking for is southern.
JD: No, no, it's not that. It's different. "I'm talking about this. You understand what I'm talking about? I'm talking about this."
Jarrod: JD. There's a certain (gulps), like a lumpy noise to it that maybe Matt hasn't adapted.
JD: Well, there's also a roundness to it that like you can think back to, okay, this is a weird comparison, but when Bob Dylan would sing in a way that sounded kind of nice, the other Bob Dylan singing voice on Lay Lady Lay. "Lay Lady Lay, lay across my big bed", you know, that thing, is just the opposite of the way that Matt's natural voice is, where his is a like dry, coarse, sandy, throaty, a little bit nasally voice. One that sounds great, one that I love to listen to as a podcast host, one that I love to listen to for Jerry Nelson characters, but translating that, from that very dry sound to the very wet sound is a bridge that vocally he has never been able to cross. So, Steve had the advantage of more time. Steve had so many advantages, but it also helped that Steve could get a little bit closer to the way that the public shares an imagined sense of what a froggy voice sounds like in a way that Matt's voice just can't quite seem to do. Is that me saying Steve should come back? Absolutely not. Is that me saying that's possible? Of course not. Am I saying that the character should be recast with someone else? I don't think so. But am I still a little bit taken out of it every time I watch a new Kermit thing? Yeah. I started listening to the Before You Leap audio book just to try to, like Baptism by Fire, get used to this voice, and still after listening to the first 30 minutes of this 4-hour audio book, I still can't quite get settled into it. And I want to, but I'm not sure I'm someone who can believe that, as Frank Oz said, the voice is nothing. When I think of a character like Little Chrissy on Sesame Street, right? I love Little Chrissy. And it didn't matter who the puppeteer was. It mattered who the voice was. It was about that Chris Cerf vocal singing Exit. Singing Count It Higher. And indeed the vocal performance that he gave as a character in those little quiet moments at the end of Exit. And then when he's shouting. For me it's about the vocal performance and I don't know who was performing the puppet in most of those. I know sometimes it was Jim Henson, but it doesn't matter. I still love that character because the vocal performance is something. The voice is something and if they brought the character back and recast the character and it didn't sound the same, I would be like "what's even the point? I don't care". And so there's only so much I can blame fans, as tiresome as the conversation gets, for having that experience of "well actually, the sound of it was a big part of my connection to this character, who sounded about the same for about 25 years for over a quarter of a century". I think that it's understandable and valid to feel an extreme sense of disconnect after that.
Gav: Yeah. And I think ultimately the line is drawn that Kermit has a unique accent and it has not reappeared necessarily every time.
JD: I mean Steve never had the accent.
Gav: No, he had like a little bit of it. He did because he's from Georgia and he can kind of mimic it a little bit.
JD: Steve's Kermit sounds a bit more Canadian whereas Jim's sounds more southern. I don't know why Steve sounds Canadian. It doesn't make sense.
Gav: This is like the only example I can think of. Jim's Kermit would say the word that as dat. And Steve's Kermit did the same thing because he picked up on those nuances. And Matt's Kermit is very enunciated. And that's all I have to say about that.
JD: Neither of them have Jim's, you know, "ball, call, fall," that kind of thing.
Jarrod: Everything that the two of you have just said, and especially your entire point, JD, that is why this new Muppet Show will not get people to change their minds.
JD sounding disappointed: Yeah.
Jarrod: That is why the latter will happen. That is why people will just never accept it. And I get it, and I don't blame anyone for having that disconnect. I'm just sick of reading the comments. Move on.
JD: Yeah.
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Sesame Street Classics on YouTube
Sesame Street debuts on Netflix
Back to the Rock Season 2
Sam and Friends Book
Jim Henson Idea Man
Bear arrives on Disney+
