Tomorrow, Disney+ will launch Muppets Now, an improvisational sitcom starring The Muppets in a setting familiar to anyone who loves the characters: behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show. This time, things are a little different than before, though; while The Muppet Show and The Muppets. both saw the characters creating their shows, Muppets Now takes place in post-production, as Scooter uploads video files of the sketches to the streaming service, while ducking notes from production, legal, the cast, and of course Kermit. That means, for a lot of people, Scooter will play the Kermit role here, since traditionally it was Kermit who was the calm at the center of The Muppet Show storm.
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Kermit is still here (and no, despite how that first paragraph might sound, he’s not transformed into some out-of-touch executive), but the straight man here is Scooter, who has to muddle through producing sketches with Uncle Deadly, Miss Piggy, Walter, Kermit, and others. Most of them, of course, are either too wrapped up in their own thing or just too distracted to see how their antics impact both the show, and Scooter.
Scooter joined ComicBook.com to discuss the show, which you can catch weekly on Fridays, beginning tomorrow on Disney+.
So in some ways, you’re taking on Kermit’s role from The Muppet Show, having to be the one to handle all the craziness behind the show.
Well — yeah, you know. I’m the guy in charge of assembling the episodes, yeah, but I’m nowhere near as together as Kermit. Kermit is like the glue of the Muppets, and I’m like the chewed-up wad of bubble gum.
In both cases, you have cast members making a lot of crazy demands. Who is the hardest person to work around on the fly?
Well I do get a considerable amount of notes form a certain…pig, let’s say. It’s a short segment, but I get pages and pages of notes, so that’s troubling. But I’m just trying to get them out the door. I’m trying to upload them and get them up. People don’t seem to pay attention to schedules, let’s say.
We see a lot of familiar faces — might we see some of the newer Muppets featured?
Yeah, Walter’s around, he’s involved in the show. I’m sure you’ve seen Joe from Legal, who’s kind of a new face that’s been hanging around. But you’ll be seeing lots of Walter.
For you personally, what is the most challenging part of doing this that isn’t dealing with cast — the hardest part of your actual job?
Well, it’s deliveries. We have a delivery deadline, which just technically is tricky. There’s a lot of time it takes to upload them and get them out the door, so that’s tricky. But I’m also involved with a couple segments; I co-host the Pepe game show, and working with Pepe can be a challenging experience at times. We have a certain way we want to run the game show but he seems to change it on the fly, so you never know what’s going to happen. That’s kind of the fun of the whole series, is that it’s a little bit chaotic. Lots of silliness, lots of chaos. It’s what we do best.
How much of this is improv versus scripted?
It’s pretty much unscripted; that’s kind of what we’re doing, we’re just kind of going with it and that’s what we set out to do. It’s called Muppets Now because it’s got a kind of spontaneous feel to it, so it’s not really heavily scripted.
Do you have a favorite segment?
Well, I like the “Muppet Labs” field tests, with Bunsen and Beaker out there doing science, doing some experiments, and there’s a lot of nice animation in it, too.
