Adam Kreutinger: We were talking to Dave Goelz about performers who carry on characters, and obviously fans can be critical of how these new performers interpret these characters.
Fran Brill in an empathetic tone: I know, yeah.
Adam: Obviously in the case of people taking on Jim Henson's characters, the original performer can't say "I approve of these choices."
Cameron Garrity: "Leave them alone!"
Fran: I think you have to be a grownup about it, and once you make a decision to leave, you can't just waltz back in and go "Excuse me, I know you've been performing this character now for a year, but I'm coming back to do some inserts." That's not who I am, I wouldn't do that.
Adam: I think from some fan perspectives, they might think "Jim might not have done it that way" or so and so, and I guess one thing that seems wonderful about you, it sounds like you want these new performers to put a lot of themselves into these characters, not necessarily just try to do what you did before.
Fran: Oh sure, because they're not me. And you can imitate somebody's voice and I know this goes on and on, but a lot of the fans say "I can do a perfect Kermit or a perfect Grover, I wish I could audition" but it is not a voiceover job. If it were it would be easy and everybody could do it, but it's so many talents at the same time, and if they don't have the voice absolutely perfect, especially in the beginning. Like when Eric Jacobson took over Grover and a lot of Frank's characters, Miss Piggy, and he is doing such a fantastic job that even I sometimes have to think "Who was that?" And I know the fans get troubled when a new person takes over a character, but all of these people are cast from within the family of the puppeteers. It's not like they have found a puppeteer from outside the group, so the ability to imitate a voice is already in the air, let's say. Cause we would all kid each other and do each other's voice sometimes, but I think you have to give a new Kermit or Prairie Dawn or whoever, you have to give that person a chance. I can tell you they worked extremely hard listening to Jim, for instance, Matt Vogel now doing Kermit, I think he's doing a great job, and he really worked at it. He went back to not what Stevie had did cause Stevie was very good too, but he went back to Jim, the original, and listened and listened. It's the intonation, the inflection, it's the humanity of that character, and the manipulation, there's just so much. Plus all these puppeteers are a unit and they're used to each other and joke around with each other. So to bring in somebody from outside the Muppet family to replace a character as important as Kermit, that almost has to be done within these performers who've been working together 10, 15, 20, 25 years, it makes perfect sense to me. Matt had to do a lot of auditioning too, they didn't just throw a major character like that around. So I hope the fans can be more understanding about what all is involved, it's not just the voice, it's finding the soul of that character, speech pattern, keeping that character alive, while improvising which is really tricky, and the quick wit that you need.
Adam: I love what you said about having the audience give the new performer a chance, because the original characters are in some way a piece of that performer, and that's what I think people fall in love with so much, how humanizing these characters can be, so when someone else takes over that, what people think they want is an impression, when really that's not what's best for this character to have a long living life as a character. So I think it's important for these new performers to try to be as honest to the character as they can be, but also in order to make this a real fleshed out character, it has to have a piece of that new performer in it.
Fran: Yeah, I mean how can it not? I have my DNA and Stephanie has her DNA and Jen Barnhart has her DNA. Fans have to be patient.
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