Joe Hennes: You and I were the driving force behind the Kerfuffle. (Jarrod Fairclough groans) By which I mean revealing the news of the Kerfuffle. Just to give some clarity, the Kerfuffle is what we call the drama, the news, all the stories surrounding Steve Whitmire being let go from the Muppets and Matt Vogel being brought in as the new performer of Kermit the Frog, and everything surrounding it.
Jarrod: I still have PTST I think. You and I were working very closely on that whole thing, we basically wrote mirror articles of each other and posted them at literally the exact same time. We had a countdown, we both went "Alright go". Your article got a lot more attraction than mine, whatever, fine. I do think that might have been because, when I posted it, something didn't work, and I had to spent 5 minutes redoing it, and literally in those 5 minutes, yours had taken off. So I understand what happened. But there were moments during that time where, in all the chaos of it, there were a couple moments where I was like "This is actually kinda cool." Not because of what was going on and all the drama, and the he said, she said, they said whole thing of it, but little things like Stephen Colbert had a Kermit impersonator, who was Rick Lyon, come on and do a sketch of new Kermit voices. I remember thinking "This is all because Joe and I pressed a button. Like, we caused this."
Joe: There was a time in that first day where I thought "This is cool, other people are picking up our news and citing us." So for awhile, I was saving all those links thinking "This is really cool". And then it started really snowballing and getting way out of control and I was like "I can't keep up with this any more." And then it got to a point where "Oh no, this isn't fun anymore. This is dramatic, horrible."
Jarrod: People are getting their feelings hurt, people are really getting upset about this. It was one of those things where I pressed it and went to bed, it was midnight my time, and waking up thinking "It'll be news, but it won't be anything huge." And you had been writing to me all night going "Holy crap, this is huge!" I went on a trip 3 or 4 months after that to Europe, and I went on this tour for 12 days. And a couple people were like "Oh, you're into the Muppets, are you? What happened with that Kermit thing?" And I was like, "I broke that story, that was me and Joe, we did that!" People had heard about it all around the world, because you and I pressed a button.
Joe: You said you went to bed thinking it would not be a huge deal. I don't think that's true, I think you and I had talked about "This will be a big deal." And we seemed to be the only ones who thought that.
Jarrod: I think we thought it was gonna be a big deal, but we didn't think it was gonna be what it became, we didn't think it was gonna be a saga. I thought it was gonna be a big deal, people were gonna hear that Steve had been let go, at that point nothing had come out about why he had been let go. I don't think I expected him to go on the Today Show, I didn't expect the Hensons to get involved, I didn't expect Disney to get involved even more, and everyone battling each other. And I wrote an article called "A rock and a hard place", because if I defended Steve, at that point, I had a bit more information as to why he had been let go, but that hadn't been public yet, I'd run the risk of offending Disney and all my contacts there. Not that I'm trying to be a Disney shill, but I don't wanna alienate myself from the puppeteers or whatever it is. But if I defend Disney, I've got a bunch of people who don't know the full story yet, and I don't even know the full story yet, getting angry at me because, Disney's the bad guy or Steve's the bad guy, or whatever it is. So it was genuinely not a fun time. It started fun for about 20 minutes, and then it stopped being fun immediately after that.
Joe: What you said about trying not to **** off one side or the other, the interesting thing was both sides had very little commentary about what was going on. It was just reporting on what we knew publicly. Before this whole thing started, it basically started because I caught wind of what was happening behind the scenes, and I also caught wind that Disney's plan was they were just gonna debut the new Kermit. They were just gonna assume that if anyone cared, they might talk about it a little bit, but it was not gonna be a story. And I said "That's a big mistake because, we saw Kermit being performed by someone else in 2009, just for a couple of TV appearances and live appearances, and the fans went nuts. This is a bad idea, this is gonna blow up in your face, so let me help you." And we worked very closely with Disney on the wording, the timing, and I thought "This is a good opportunity for us to officially work with Disney and Muppets on something to help our overall relationship." And the fact that the story blew up so badly, it ended up doing more harm than good for our relationship with them, because it wasn't until they had a new regime behind the scenes before we started having a good relationship with them again.
Jarrod: It's funny you say that because, I feel a little differently to that. So when Steve was coming out and saying more stuff, I was in a little bit of contact with at that point the vice president Debbie, and I think there was a PR guy helping her with the whole thing. So Steve would say something and I'd go "Do you guys wanna say anything? If so, I'm happy to post it for you." And they seemed quite keen on at least chatting about it and having some sort of dynamic. So I probably feel a little differently than you do about the whole thing. But I will also say I for sure got a much better relationship with Disney now. Leigh, who's taken over the Muppets, fellow Aussie, she's wonderful. I think the relationship defiantly had a dip in a sense, but also I found a way to maybe boost myself up a little bit too.
Joe: Yeah, the folks that are there now have great heads on their shoulders and it's been great. And I pray to God we never have another story like that, that we have to deal with, that we have to work with them to make sure that we can mange Muppet fans expectations.
Jarrod: And I should say, that Kerfuffle continues to this day. Because how many people like to write on social media "That doesn't sound like Kermit"? I have no time for those people anymore, it's been 4 years now, it's time to move on.
Joe: Yeah. People were saying the same thing when Steve took over as Kermit, for years they said it doesn't sound the same. So of course people are gonna say that, but now there's an emotional attachment, it's not just the person who used to do it can't do it anymore, there's a story that we don't fully understand that we're taking very personally, and we maybe even hate Matt Vogel just because he happened to be caught in this crossfire. And that's not fair to Matt, it's not fair to Kermit, it's not fair to the brand, and honestly like you said, I don't have time for it. I don't have time to address the fans who have that sort of complaint because, there's nothing that we can say that will bring Steve back to the Muppets, and I think the important thing is we had the drama, we need to embrace what we have, so that we can have quality Muppet stuff moving forward.
Jarrod: Absolutely.
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