Missing Steve Whitmire In The Muppet Haunted Mansion

I meant to put this up on Halloween but had to balance a few other tasks. So this week is going to be a Halloween catch-up on all the articles I missed!

Disney buying the Muppets has been a mixed bag. We’ve had some really great additions to the franchise, a few flops, and a sense that maybe corporate is getting away from Jim Henson’s vision of several advanced sock puppets remembering to be funny. The grey area is that some of the content can be really funny, and even poignant. We remember that the modern iterations of the workshop aren’t the same with most of the cast having either died of old age or moved on to other projects.

Of course, there is one area that Disney has not explained: firing Kermit’s performer Steve Whitmire. Matt Vogel has filled in the webbed feet that the role requires well, but we weren’t even told what happened. As far as we know, Whitmire didn’t break any pedestals. He displeased the mouse, perhaps over discussions about their Kermit interpretation, and he had to go. Lego Masters hired him for a cameo puppet role, but he hasn’t appeared since.

Thanks to this firing, one character has been demoted to some silent cameos. That is Rizzo the Rat. People may not have liked him as much as say Kermit or Rowlf, but he had an impact nonetheless.