Yeah, because we wanted to go back to the original tone. It's one of the original movies like The Muppet Movie, Muppets Take Manhattan, The Great Muppet Caper. Those kinds of movies. So that was really important that we hit that tone and those have a lot of cameos in them and so Jason and I started asking people and everyone we asked just wants to do it.
You get the initial script, and then things sort of change here and there, but the whole thing is this sort of mushy collaboration, which I love.
The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.
It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is.
I was a huge Muppet fan growing up. I want to bring it back to the early '80s Muppet movies, when the scripts could have been performed by humans.
When I decided to pursue a career as a Muppet Performer when I was in college, it was my hope to be able to play a wide range of Muppet characters in all areas and genres of television and film.
I always wanted to be a Muppet.
A man can certainly be a Muppet. Being a Muppet is a state of mind. It's about finding that little part of you that's unique, and not being embarrassed by it, but cherishing it.
One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy. [...] Sentiment is not mushy.
Anyone who wants to offer me as mushy, earthy, crunchy a role as they can, I will probably take it. In real life, I cry at a drop of a hat, and I'm a mom, and I'm pretty mushy! We all have so many colors as actors that we want to show.
My roles in comedies from 'Austin Powers' to 'Tommy Boy' to 'Wayne's World,' were sort of comedic 'straight man' parts. My character on 'Parks & Recreation' is the comic relief in a comedy. To play a character that appears strictly for laughs is sort of new for me and really fun.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be in a group, or I wanted to work for Greenpeace, or I wanted to be a Buddhist monk. Those were the only three things I really wanted to do. I was doing some sort of soul searching in life.
I love the sport of tennis, but I sort of got a little bit away from what I really wanted to do. It became robotic for me, and that's not what I wanted. It's such an amazing sport, and I just really wanted to enjoy it, and I lost that enjoyment and that passion.
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The [character] that I was able to crawl into the most was Lilo from Lilo & Stitch. This was sort of a cartoony-looking girl, but her problems were completely real. Her funky world that she createdI mean, you know kids like that. It was very honest and genuine and I wanted to do an honest job, so I thought about the character a lot before I animated it. I really got into the character, where [I] almost felt that pain that she had. The loss of the parents - you need to feel all that. That was a big learning experience for me.