The dispute between Steve Whitmire and the Hensons is starting to get ugly. If you’ve been out of the loop, perhaps because you’ve had the good sense to construct a childhood-protecting firewall, here are the basics.
When Jim Henson died in 1990, Whitmire inherited the role of Kermit the Frog. He was Kermit in highs like the Muppet Christmas Carol and the 2011 Muppets movie, as well as lows like Muppets from Space and the 2015 Muppets sitcom. However, it was recently revealed that Disney had fired Whitmire. Ostensibly, according to a blogpost written by Whitmire, Disney sacked him because he was a one-man barricade dedicated to preserving the spirit of Jim Henson’s creations in the face of a corporate monolith.
But now the Hensons have waded in. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Brian Henson called Whitmire a troublemaker who indulged in “brinksmanship” and was actively destroying Kermit. “Kermit has, as a character, flattened out over time and has become too square and not as vital as it should have been,” Henson said. “Again, what my dad brought to it … was a wry intelligence, a little bit of a naughtiness”. He even went so far as to say that, in retrospect, he should have fired Whitmire back when Disney obtained the Muppets in 2004.
It’s never pretty when dirty laundry gets aired in public, but it’s nothing short of heartbreaking that this is happening to the Muppets. The Muppets have been around for so long that generation after generation feels a sense of proprietorship over them. The Muppets are part of our lives, and as such we know when they’re being sold short. That’s why, while there’s little better than a work like Jason Segel’s Muppets film – that manages to hit the right mix of purity and anarchy and self-reference – nothing is quite as bad as a botched Muppet project.
The Muppets sitcom is a case in point. As the most recent high-profile Muppets project, it might have been the catalyst for Whitmire’s sacking. That was a miserable slog of a show determined to sell out the Muppets – and Kermit in particular – at every turn. It turned Kermit into a stressed-out depressive egotist a million miles from the open-hearted frog of Rainbow Connection. Worse still, it had the temerity to make him horny. The Muppets sitcom was an all-time low, a tone-deaf shriek of a project that almost irreparably tarnished the brand.
Personally speaking, as far as this dispute goes, I’m siding with whichever party was most against it. Who that is remains to be seen. Cheryl Henson has publicly taken issue with Whitmire’s Kermit characterisation, calling him “a bitter, angry, depressed victim”.
But, on the other hand, plenty of other veteran Muppet performers were upset with the sitcom. Frank Oz, for example, expressed his disappointment by saying “I felt the show wasn’t true to the characters” and laid the blame with the writers. Those writers, presumably, were hired by Disney and the Muppets Studio. Combined with Brian Henson’s argument that Kermit’s character needs to be “stretched” to meet the times, it’s hard not to take all the available information and see them as the bad guy and Whitmire as the victim, the stubborn purist who got kicked aside.
The most important figure in all of this, though, is Kermit the Frog. He is an icon, and above all he needs to be protected. Genuinely, one of the highlights of my career was getting to interview Kermit three years ago. After a sulky six minutes with Ricky Gervais, meeting Kermit – or, rather, meeting Steve Whitmore benignly crouching on the floor with his hands in the air – was a breath of fresh air.
As the interview started and Kermit came to life, I found myself forgetting Whitmore was even there. I was talking to, and making a tangible connection with, Kermit. And as an interviewee, he was everything I wanted him to be. Kind, funny, charming, slightly under the thumb of Miss Piggy. That was the Kermit I grew up with. That was the Kermit I’ll remember. That’s the Kermit I want to preserve. Whatever it takes to make that happen, that’s what should be done.
