MUPPET MASTERS
CANADIAN-SHOT FRAGGLE ROCK REBOOT KEEPS THE SPIRIT OF JIM HENSON’S LOVABLE CREATION ALIVE
It’s Feb. 9, 2023, and the Fraggle Rock Creature Shop at the Calgary Film Centre is in full swing, a bustling hive of activity.
There are lifeless Fraggles everywhere, but also small animatronic machinery, half-built Doozer figures and more than one version of Sprocket, the famously fluffy and intelligent canine. For those of a certain age, they are all immediately recognizable if perhaps unsettlingly out of context. It’s like Santa’s workshop without the elves, or a childhood memory that has exploded all over the room. All are versions of characters that sprang from the imagination of the late Jim Henson. The creator of Fraggle Rock, The Muppets and Sesame Street died in 1990, but his spirit and artistry seem to fill the massive sets of the reboot, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.
“That’s Sprocket,” confirms Scott Johnson, supervisor of the Creature Shop in Calgary, as he picks up the lovable sheepdog. “He’s a great puppet. A lot of it is the original puppet from the original show. Certainly, the foam of the puppet gives way but sometimes the outer skin survives. The insides get rebuilt. We have almost 200 puppets on the show, including our Doozers.”
For the uninitiated, both Sprocket and the Doozers are supporting characters from the original Fraggle Rock series, which ran from 1983 to 1987. Sprocket is the loyal dog owned by the show’s only human character, Doc (played by Lilli Cooper in the new series), who is constantly trying to convince his owner that the subterranean Fraggles are real. Doozers are industrious, six-inch humanoid creatures that live alongside the carefree Fraggles and are single-mindedly dedicated to various construction projects. Pieces of their imaginative machinery, no larger than the old Tonka toy trucks, are also scattered throughout the Creature Shop on this particular day. In some ways, the cluttered workshop nicely symbolizes the Fraggle Rock reboot: everything is somewhat recognizable, even if the technology that brings them to life has evolved in the past 40 years. Season 2 wrapped a few days after producers took Postmedia on a private tour of the set in early February 2023. The show airs March 29 on Appletv+.
“We implement 3D printers in our building process,” says Johnson, pointing to a row of humming printers. “But, for a lot of it, we stay pretty darn true to the methods of building that (Jim Henson) created back in the day. There’s foam, there’s little wooden bones that are inside the legs and stuff. We generally do use pretty much the same methods that have been used. That yields the same result. It gives us those classic characters. There’s pressure to recreate those and not deviate from them in a way that would be wrong.”
The new series is a loving homage to the original, which introduced the world of underground cave-dwelling, radish-loving Fraggles such as Gobo, Mokey, Wembley, Boober, Red and Large Marvin along with the hulking Gorgs and stoic Doozers.
What is different is the scale and scope. That’s immediately obvious when venturing into the Great Hall set.
Although it was partially dismantled at the time of our visit, there was no denying its detail and size. The central meeting place of the Fraggles, it has its own 10.6-metre waterfall and Doozer monorail. On another sound stage, there is the massive set of the Gorg household/castle and garden, populated by a family of giants that are larger than humans and take a team of puppeteers and wranglers to operate alongside a performer in the suit.
When Fraggle Rock first filmed in the 1980s, it was in a relatively small space in the Yorkville area of Toronto.
“I was just speechless to walk into the Great Hall,” says Karen Prell, an American puppeteer who plays Red Fraggle in the new series 40 years after originating the role for Henson. “I think the entire studio where we shot in Toronto could probably fit inside the Great Hall. It’s just so big and beautiful and all the different types of rock formations and just what they’ve been able to do with lighting, as well as the big camera crane. You can really move in all around the set. Forty years ago, we were basically using CBC News cameras. So it’s having these huge cinematic sets and cinematic camera moves. The Gorgs’ garden, in the original, was just this tiny little corner next to the Great Hall. Now the Gorgs’ garden is an entire stage. It’s so wonderful how the same idea and feeling is being expanded and becoming more of what we hinted at 40 years ago.”
Veteran Canadian puppeteer and voice actor Frank Meschkuleit has also worked on Henson projects in the past, including the 1985 Sesame Street film Follow That Bird and a stint on the original series donning the suit and giant head to play Junior Gorg. For Back to the Rock, he took over the puppeteering of Boober Fraggle from Dave Goelz and also voices the character of Large Marvin.
“This is just off-the-hook huge for a puppet show,” he says. “My mind was blown. Each episode is like a feature film by Canadian standards. I’ve been puppeteering for 40 years, I’ve worked on a lot of stuff. This is far and away the most intricate, biggest in scope and reach, more thoughtful series I’ve ever worked on.”
It’s not just size. Meschkuleit says the new series also amplifies the spirit of the original, which celebrated diversity among other progressive ideas. He credits executive producer, writer, puppeteer and Fraggle Rock superfan John Tartaglia, who began his career at the age of 16 when he became the youngest puppeteer to ever work on Sesame Street.
This new phase for the Fraggles began in 2020 as a series of Appletv+ short films that puppeteers filmed on their iphones at home during the pandemic. Tartaglia executive produced those shorts and also performs the role of head Fraggle Gobo in Back to the Rock.
Fraggle Rock first came to Calgary in 2021, when it took over sound stages for five months to shoot the first season of the reboot.
Season 1 also featured an impressive roster of guest stars, including Patti Labelle, Daveed Diggs, Ed Helms, Kenan Thompson and the Foo Fighters (producers remain tight-lipped about what guest stars we can expect in season 2). More than 200 technicians, set builders, sculptors, puppeteers, hairdressers and other craftspeople brought the series to life.
This is just off-the-hook huge for a puppet show. — Veteran
puppeteer/voice actor Frank Meschkuleit