✱ Miss Piggy
She’s back to woo more fans on Disney +
It’s not every day that you get to interview a childhood hero, so when I heard I would be interviewing one of mine, Miss Piggy, I got a rush of blood to the head. Dressing as her in homage to her stylistic glory — pearls, blonde flick, lippy and lashes — seemed the only way to go. All the stops were pulled out, and never have I been so prepared for anything. I was so prepared I even had time to vacuum the stairs.
Miss Piggy first became a highlight of my Sunday nights when The Muppet Show came on. The glamorous paramour of Kermit the frog (even if Kermit wasn’t entirely aware) took no prisoners — she karate-chopped them.
The Muppet Show started in 1976 and has never lost its appeal. There have been 12 movies no less, and their latest outing is on Disney+, with a new episode of Muppets Now every week. This is why I am getting to speak to Miss Piggy, who does a Lifesty(le) segment on the show; as befits the times, she has a personal assistant and a celebrity sidekick in Taye Diggs. Actress Linda Cardellini guests on her interview slot too.
But it’s not just Miss Piggy who has celebrity guests: the whole show continues the tradition established in the original series of having lots of them. Ru Paul, Seth Rogen, Danny Trejo and more might be getting in depth with Kermit or cooking with the Swedish chef. Or, as it more often turns out, cooking against the Swedish chef.
It was to be a Zoom interview, and standard procedure is that you check in early, all the moving parts are sorted and then you wait. But as I waited, my be-wigged self staring back at me from a screen full of 15 faces, none other of which was in Muppet style, doubt slithered in.
People who know me got a laugh at seeing my Miss Piggy transformation — they know I have dark hair that is not a Farrah Fawcett flick, and no special affinity for pearls. But as I gazed at the faces on the screen, it occurred to me that to those who don’t know me, I just looked like a weird oul’ one whose fashion sense had gotten stuck in 1978.
As the minutes ticked by, the rush of blood to the head felt less and less inspired. I could feel my soul melt. I could also feel my face melt because it was hot under that wig. For the first five minutes, I was feeling self-doubt. By the last five minutes, I was in full existential crisis — not the best state of mind to head into a meeting with Miss Piggy.
And then suddenly there she was — my childhood heroine, and not just mine. Miss Piggy’s combination of glamour, confidence and power was unusual in a female character, and she got away with a version of femininity that would have been difficult for a human half a century ago. In honour of this work as an icon of third-wave feminism, in 2015 she received an award from none other than Gloria Steinem. She took my compliments as I expected — namely, they were something she expected.
“I wish you could see my whole outfit today… I look ravishing.”
As befits a style guru, she is something of an influencer these days and very busy on Instagram. She uses the hashtag #SendMeMakeup and I felt real fear when she misheard and thought I had appropriated it for myself. “That’s my hashtag!” The fear only increased when I asked if she was still editing Vogue Paris
as she had been back in the 2011 movie The Muppets.
“I mean, I’m sure you know, um, when this is all over, I’ll be doing all sorts of photoshoots for them,” she says first, then the tone dips; memories of Muppets getting karate-chopped flood my mind.
“Oh... you mean from the movie? Right. That was just a movie. I think you’re getting the line between reality and fiction a little blurred...”
The words were polite but the tone was menacing. But worse, I was having an existential crisis anyway and now I have a puppet berating me for blurring reality and fiction. I may never recover.
Miss Piggy got gentler when talking about her weekly style advice on Muppets Now. “I tell everybody how they can live more like their favourite superstar. We do fashion tips, travel tips, diet tips, tips on how to give tips, tips on how to promote a show about tips,” she explains.
She also does an interview each week where her professed technique is to ask for questions from the public, so she doesn’t have to think up more than one of her own. I thought it such a brilliant idea that I stole it and asked my friends what they would most like to ask Miss Piggy.
I was inundated with suggestions. Had she done special training for Pigs in Space? Was her character based on Jane Fonda in Barbarella? How does she feel about silk purses and being proof that you can put pearls on swine... There was even a question about an orange Muppet in a white house (whatever that could possibly mean), but at the end of the day what everyone wanted... nay, needed to know was what was the exact state of play between Miss Piggy and Kermit? Was their great romance still ongoing?
“Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. You didn’t have to think hard to come up with that one.”
Being belittled by a puppet is weird. Apparently everyone asks her that —Piggy and Kermie being right up there with Romeo and Juliet — so I insisted that the people of Ireland demanded to know.
“Okay well, people of Ireland, I am not with Kermit right now. Nobody is with anybody right now. We are supposed to stay six feet apart.”
Right, yes. I thought Muppets lived in a separate reality, but apparently Covid-19 is a crisis there too. Isn’t it always the way that you make a fool of yourself with the people you most want to impress? I had thought she and I might bond, but I began to feel like I have just annoyed her. So she didn’t do lockdown with Kermit?
“No, no, it’s just been me and my dogs. I taught Foo Foo to speak English last week.”
She calls the dog over; Foo Foo is out of my sight and refusing to speak English. “You’re making me look bad,” she hisses. It is heartening to see that age has not dimmed her fire.
But maybe she took pity on me, and in a moment I can treasure, Miss Piggy says: “I love your wig, you have to tell me where you got that wig!”
I stammer some fawning gratitude; afterwards I curse myself for not having said it wasn’t a wig but a look I had been working on since 1976. But by this stage I am sure my grip on reality could be perilously loose. Is this the reason they say never meet your idols?
Muppets Now is available on Disney+