Hi am Kate Hudson, and my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationships and what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling raivalry. No, no, sibling. You don't do that with your mouth revelry. That's good. This was such a great conversation. We spoke with Lisa and Brian Henson and that this is Jim Henson who is the creator of the Muppets. These are his children, Yeah, and these are his children who have have taken it over since his since he passed, and have been doing some really interesting things and keeping his work and then adding adding to it as well. Going. I loved it. I loved every second of it need too. Well, even just a little window into his parents too, you know, and how they came from, you know, how they met in like puppeteering school and it was so like it's just so eccentric and offbeat and odd, you know what I mean. Yeah, And also the artistry behind it, I mean it really is. It's it kind of feels like it's a dying art and yet there's still all these amazing, you know, puppeteers out there who are creating these incredible puppets and also learning about the muppets. I had no idea half of the things that I learned on this about snel about that it was not intended for children. I mean, it was like the whole thing. I was just very taken by. Mm hmm. Also, just like the icon like how Kermit and Miss Piggy sort of came about. Ah, Kermit, we sang, we sang for them? Didn't we sing for them? We did? Or did we sing for ourselves? After we got off? And then and then I had a little Kermit with me and we sang Rainbow Connection. I think we destroyed Rainbow Connection. And it's really what. I love that song. It's the Willie and Nelson version especially. But it was also just a really interesting, interesting conversation because these kids have had to take over an iconic brand company and brand exactly and and and you know, how to manage that and how to sort of individuate but still keep the integrity of what their dad wanted them to do. It was just a really fun conversation. They were engaged and willing to tell the stories, and it was really really fun. And they're doing really cool, cool shit, right now too. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And Lisa Henson, who really runs the show, she was just so sharp. I just enjoyed her frankness and you could tell that she is more of the sort of structured type of brain, whereas her brother Brian is more of the creative you know, and kind of like more director style. And yeah, she's the designated driver when Brian's like on eighteen Hits of Acid. Well, I'm not so sure. Brian is an eighteen Hits of Acid kind of guy, Ollie, But but I don't know. Well, it was a good conversation. You're gonna enjoy it and check out Earth to Ned because I'm on it and I actually worked with Brian Henson. Hey, Allie, do you remember when because I forgot that. They it's also Fraggle Rock. Oh god, yeah, come the Fragle Rock like him from One Another Day into I mean they're like ingrained, ye, they're ingrained in my head. Fraggle Rock, Oh god. Yeah, that is flashball memory where I'm like like going down into the rock and the title sequence it's like ingrained in my old brain. I know it's true. It's trigger it's fit triggering you're like, I know, like, where's our father? Where? What was your favorite Muppet? That's a hard one, gosh. I mean Animal was always sitt out, you know, just he was just crazy. I like, I like that, you know. But then Oscar, you know, Oscar the Grouch always dug him. I know, Oscar the Grouch Beaker, Beaker always made me laugh. He's just a weirdo. I loved Animal. Animal was great. And Miss Piggy, I mean Miss Piggy always she was so funny. I mean she was badass. All right, Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Is really interesting and we absolutely loved having them on the show. Yeah, we started off by talking about Earth the Ned, which I did which is now on Disney Plus. So, without further ado, here's Lisa and Brian Henson. This is something we've been working on for quite a while. But so Ned is a big giant alien and he's the captain of a spaceship and they were sent to Earth basically to invade or destroy Earth, but Ned instead I fell in love with Earth mostly through TV. He started monitoring TV and he just fell in love with everything entertainment and celebrities and pop culture, and so he and his lieutenant Cornelius, who's is put upon sidekick, and their artificial intelligence Betty, who is a virtual character, and then there's a whole bunch of these little clods that are running around which are kind of the crew, the disposable crew. And so he decided, rather than invading and destroying Earth, I'm going to do a talk show so that I'll be the most beloved celebrity in the world. That's basically what he wants. So and then what he does is he and Cornelius have the ability to just beam anybody into their ship anytime they want. And Oliver was beamed into I was beamed in and it was a ball and the actor was offstage, you know, improving with me. It was all improv, which was so fun. Well, he's a puppeteer. He was working the face. He was working the face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, on Ned, there's two up here is we're going to face by remote and then there's one puppeteer inside and three puppeteers under, all six of them working one character. Okay, so now that we're talking about puppeteering, it was a blast. I want to start from the beginning now, but for for those who don't know that are listening right now, your father was the beloved and very infamous and uh infamous, I mean famous. It's like The Three Amigos. He's like, no, no no, no, he's infamous. He's more than famous Three Amigos. We love that movie, Jim Henson, and I know for us he is like a staple not only in our childhood and your guys' childhood clearly, but even kids today, their childhood. He just lives on and on. And one of the things I learned when I was doing my research on you guys was that your mom and him met literally your parents met at puppeteer school. They met at a puppeteering class, that's right. Yeah, I didn't know how influentially your mother was to all of this as well. So I kind of want to just start with where were you born? Well, I'm going to start with he where I was born because I'm the oldest. So I was born in I was born in Washington, D C. And that's where our parents were living at that time. As you said, they met in puppeteering class at the University of Maryland. My father was a freshman and he was really precocious and advanced, and you know, my mom always said that it was like he was teaching the class like he had already been doing a puppet show on television locally, which he'd started as a teenager, so by he was just taking that classes to get a really easy credit because he was already a puppeteer. And so he sort of took the lead in the class and thought she was a pretty good student, and so he hired her to come and help him on the local television show. And she was three years older than him, so it was a freshman and a senior, which seemed like a vast age golf when they first met, but then they worked together for a long, long time, best of friends, partners in the business, and then ultimately very romantically involved. Were they both from DC or where were they from? Originally? The father was born in Mississippi, mom born in New York City? So what year was this in the fifties, like late fifties, And you know, I was born INTI. I was born in nineteen sixty And somebody had sort of the bad idea at least it's sort of been a kind of a bad joke on me of incorporating the Muppets on my birthday, which has caused people to celebrate Kermit the Frog's birthday on my birthday. So it will show up as like, you know, when you say, like what celebrities are born on what day, it will be like May ninth, nineteen sixty Kermit the Frog, It's like, not k that's me. I was going to how many kids are there? How many siblings do you have? Five? There are five total. Our brother died. It's a b's podcast, Like when you hold up five fingers that just means you're right. That doesn't help it all. Uh, there, Yes, there were five of us. Our brother passed away, and so there's now three girls and one boy. And what's the age difference from Lisa from you to the youngest? Ten years? My mom had five kids in ten years. Wow, it were just it was just a brood, but she had but she had four of us in five years and then yeah, the fifth was five years later, so she was literally just pregnant. So what was that? What was the house like, what was it like growing up? Just craziness. You almost asked the most unwelcome question that we're there were always asked, which is like did we did dad do puppets around the house? And did we and did we think the puppets were real? So I wasn't going I wasn't going there quite yet. But Oliver you're allowed to because in ours and when Oliver came on earth to Ned, we we we we asked your permission. But we did the whole interview where Ned is only excited about everybody else in your family just wants to know about Kurt. Yeah, we have a we have that in common. I was gonna say, like the relatable aspect of this interview will be we know what it's like when people ask the same. So what kind of advice did your dad give you? Was it just performing every morning breakfasting? Did you sing? Right? Yeah? No? Well, for us, we had a house full of animals, and our mother was she she co founded the muppets and was very but obviously once it was a house full of kids. She was also like an art teacher. She would sometimes be a substitute, but she was like an art teacher at home. So there was always crazy arts and crafts that were half finished in rooms all over the place. And then there was just animals, like animals everywhere what kind of animals like dogs and cats are like rabbits, birds, It was well, I had rabbits, my brother had ferrets, we had guinea pigs, we had hamsters at one point, with birds mostly a lot of cats and the cats. We couldn't even keep the cats away, Like the cats would run away from a neighbor's house and come move into our house, and then we couldn't get the cat to move back to the neighbors. So we just ended up like gathering cats like us, like a snowball. Yeah, some of them had. Some of them didn't have good names either, because after we had so many cats, then they would just get named for like where they came from. Like one was named Wilderness, one was named woods Wood, and then we just gave up. One was named Kitty. Although my cat that I had we were allowed to name the first cats we got we each named. Mine was named snowy Feats wow, because they had but it was specifically snowy Feats. Which was the other thing about our cat house is the cats. The way they would get into the house is we would leave this door open on the second floor terra terrace off the back of the house, and the cats would climb the outside of the house, which was wood. Literally they hang out with their claws and climb up one story to get to the terrace. And that's somebody they would get in and out of the house, particularly during the night, And the raccoons figured it out, and the raccoons started following cats up. And then the raccoons and the cats got along, so it was all fine. And so we the raccoons started eating with the cats, and my mother was like, Ah, what the heck, I'll just feed them all. So so then we got to the point where we'd be sitting having dinner and there'd be three raccoons at the right at right at the patio door next to us, just waiting for their dinner. It was. It was crazy. It was. The house was like a crazy zoo. Was it really was? Were there any rules? I mean it was it was a very free a free home to do what you please. Yeah. It was pretty unruly. Yeah, it was pretty free. Like there were even like things you would think they have to have a rule against that, like jumping off the balcony into the swimming pool or or jumping down the laundry shoot two floors, like everything was allowed as far as I can remember, So that while when you were kids, was the Muppets happening? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, was that before you were born? Yeah, the Muppets were started? What officially did fifty five? Lisa, fifty five to fifty eight? It's like I did. I think it became incorporated in fifty eight, but really they started like in fifty five, which is, you know, five years before Lisa was born. No, definitely, and then like Sesame Street. See, up until Sesame Street, our dad never did any He didn't do kids stuff. Yeah, he did the special with your Mom, did he was on Yep, that's right, Yeah, and I forgot he only yeah. He and Kermit was a guest had a very funny piece where Goldie kisses Kermit and Kermit warns her that he might turn into a prince, and then she kisses him and she turns into a puppet and then Ruth Buzzy comes in that shit, everybody turns into puppets because the kissing into pretty ridiculous but hilarious. But up until Sesame Street, our dad didn't do kids much. Kids prayed, he did some very early in his career. But then when Sesame Street came out. He started like entertaining to our age group. So we were like, I was like the perfect age for Sesame Street. Lisa, who's three years older than me, was probably just a little old for Sesame Street, right Lisa, when they started me, Sesame Street came out when I was ten, so I would say I was really a lot too old for sesame since I learned my alphabet away a lot. But also originally, but originally Sesame Street was targeting like the five year old, marketing on younger and younger and younger as it's gotten. So how did it all start? Though? I mean Sesame Street was for kids, it was more it was more sort of adult material. Prior to Sesame before that, he was on at Sullivan. He was a regular on at the Muppets as a as an act was a regular at Sullivan did the Tonight Show, Did Your Mom Specials? Study and Share? They would basically do appearances and then the Muppets had some specials too. They did. In fact, we were just looking at his my Dad's diaries and after doing the Goldie Han Show, he came up with the idea of doing a Valentine special and he wanted to do it with Goldie, but then I guess she wasn't available and he ended up Once he finally did sell it, he ended up doing it with Mia Farrell. But it's interesting that it was O'm cute. I love that, Isn't it crazy when you think about, like what those times? But that time must have been like for them because you had just that one opportunity. How many channels did you have, you know, to be able to do a special? Yeah? Yeah, And those variety shows were so interesting. I remember going to watch a lot of the tapings and you know, you just even the idea of a variety show is a little bit alien today, like because I tell people they were like, how do the Muppets get started? So well, they were on variety shows. They were a variety act, and they went from one variety show to another, and ultimate the Muppet Show kind of grew out of that because it was the Muppets chance to have their own variety show and bring on guests versus them being the guest on somebody else's variety show. But the whole genre it feels like it's you know, so much of the past. Oliver and I were just we were just talking about this, how we want to do a show, and we were like, maybe we should do a variety. I know they're dead, we should get backety with the numbers and you know of actual like moving cameras and all that jazz. Do they work a ton? I mean, were you guys on your own to do your stuff or were they home a lot? Well, there were some. There were so many kids that our mother had to pretty pretty much stop working. So our mother was home with us, got it almost all the time. But our dad was working all the time. He would try to come home if he was in New York, he would generally come home, but I can't remember. He would come home like maybe just before we would go to bed. And he worked a lot. He was also crazy. He couldn't do like seventy two hour stretches. And he was just one of those people like in the beginning of Sesame Street, he and Frank Oz and Don Sealing, which was most of what Muppett Sink was in those days. In the first year of Sesame Street, they did all the animated films too, so he was he was also an animator for Sesame Street and did these animated films. But they used to go in and just work NonStop until they'd finished the film, Like worked for fifty five hours without stopping or sleeping. Wow. And he also he also worked a lot in Canada and in England, and so we did get used to him being gone for long stretches of time. And you know, when you think back, like that was no texting with your kids family, You know, that was really out of touch. Where were you guys living at the time, Like, where was the family home suburbs of New York? Yeah, Armank. We were in Armank, New York, which is right next to Bedford, New York, which more people know. Yeah, and I was were in New York City. But then right after I was born, the family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and then just over the border to Bedford, New York. And that's where we grew up until we all went off to school. So wait, growing up, what was your relationship like with your siblings? It was a pretty tight group. There's a lot of you, there's five of you. I mean, was it a big unit or were there their little factions at first? When we were really young, Like we didn't even have other playmates. Particularly we lived in this beautiful home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and there were no neighs. There were no neighbors, and my mom is a little bit antisocial, so like we were each other's playmates. That was it. And then later we moved to Armac, New York, we had a neighborhood, we had some we made we started making some other friends. But yeah, when we were literally we were extremely close knit. Yeah, but you know, there weren't factions so much, but certainly for we were so close in age that that always creates some issues. Like I wanted my friends, but my brother wanted my friends. And then my sister, you know, like for me, I've got a there's a sister between Lisa and I so, and Lisa and I are only three years before SO, and there's one in the middle. So my older sister was just like one to two grades higher than me, depending on whether it was before or after. I had to be held back. And then my brother was one grade under me. And it was just like we were so close in age. I was just like crossed my mind something really interesting and maybe it's not to anybody else but me, but I was thinking about how when we were growing up, when we were young, nobody knew really who our parents were until we got older, until we were more in the teens, because our parents made movies that we didn't watch when we were kids. So but for you guys, your parents did things that like every kid was watching, I mean, like millions of kids over what a hundred countries watched The Muppets or Sesame Street. Like everybody that you must have known when you were little knew that, like your parents that were your family was they knew the Muppets. Some people knew Jim Henson because he had done personal appearances on talk shows, but really it was the Muppets that were so famous. And then what happened is my dad I think he did the was at least the first American Express card commercial. It was that American Express cards campaign. Yeah, the first time they did that. That signature campaign were the one where they said you may not know me, but you do know of me or what what was the catchphrase of that least if something like that. I remember that. Yeah. It was all hosted by people who their work was very well known, but people didn't know them. I don't know, but that ad took off like what fire and they just placed it everywhere all the time. So for us. Literally like over nine our dad became face famous right up until one day he could be anywhere nobody know who the heck he was, and then it felt like the next day he couldn't walk down the street without being recognized. It was also the height of popularity of Sesame Street, so he had he was, like, as we were saying, like sort of a variety show act, not the you know, the Muppets were not the star of a huge hit show. And so Sesame was also very big at that time. And it was so big I think they showed it on PBS like four times a day, like you could just turn on that channel and it would just be Sesame Street all the time. And so yeah, the one two punch of the American Express ad and then the Sesame Street success. And I think this was around seventy one or so that this happened. Then suddenly he was very famous. I was just talking about this, Actually I forget with who, but I was saying how Sesame Street was so far ahead of its time as far as inclusion and diversity and you know, finding the oddities and bringing them to light, you know what I mean. It was just so far ahead of its time. Was so so progressive. So it truly was. And also the equity, the idea that there's that urban kids were not we're not getting the same advantage of private preschools, and at that time wasn't even preschool. It was really kindergarten. You know, they were you know, kids that were not going to kindergarten, and then other kids that were going to full time kindergarten. They had a big advantage over the other kids. But just the idea that the show should be created, you know, not only to harness the power of television in terms of educating kids, but really to address a kind of societal in equity which does feel very contemporary. Mm hmm, it does. I mean. And obviously that was your dad's vision, right, I mean from the actually wasn't. No, he was, he was, he was on it from the very beginning. He was a big talent get for them. It was actually created by academics and public television producers who created they went they had a workshop called Children's Television Workshop and it was with academics at Harvard. They they studied what, you know, what could be taught to kids through television, and it was you know, really I think the first like hard educational show on television. Because now we think, well, there's just there are just hundreds of educational shows, but at the time, that was it. They experimented on how you could teach and then they did it. Yeah. I mean the big shows when Sesame Street came out were like Mister Rogers and Local cap Yeah. So for me growing up, like I remember going on the sets of Big Trouble, Little China, and I was just in awe right, like I would I would. I mean, it made me want to be creative. It was like, oh, yeah, this is the world that I want to be a part of. I want to do this. I mean, I wonder there's five kids, of all of the kids, did all of you guys have a little bit of that where you wanted to follow in this footstep? Because your mom too, I mean, even though she she's clearly a creative I mean, oh huge, and she she you know, she founded them up with our dad. It was just there was so many kids at home, but definitely we all spend a lot of time on the set with our dad, largely because he worked so much that, for instance, if he was working in New York on a weekend, he would take at least one of us to work with him. So if it was not a school day and he had to go to work, he would take at least one, maybe two of us to work. So so we all spend a lot a lot of time hanging out in them up at workshop. Hanging out in the shooting stage is reading. You know, for me, a lot of my childhood was spent reading paperback novels, sitting on the floor of a shooting stage and loving and loving me too. Not only on the floor, but under the puppet stage because yeah, the way that the puppeteers work, they have a raise stage and then so the set is raised, so there's this whole kind of underground below the set of scaffolding and such, and there's also monitors down there so the puppeteers can see what they're doing. So as a child, you could PLoP yourself hide under this stage, watch what they're doing on the monitors, and just go about your business of reading, homework, whatever. And we did long days on the set, like you know, it wasn't like, oh, visit for an hour and a half, you know, it was you know, call to rap, and you just got very used to being yeah, yeah, ers down for twelve hours. Yeah, we would just sit there all day. It was just what we did was it was it nice to get picked, meaning like Dad's like, all right, you guys come with me, and the rest are like, god, damn it. You know. Yeah, actually, but I think he was he was always very careful to try to kind of give equal time. I think he was. Actually, he was always very careful. I think like those days that we spent with him while he was working and get to be the one kid or the one of the two kids that were there with him that day would feel it would feel really really special because he was incredibly inclusive, like he would bring us into the editing room, to every meeting, to the story meeting, to the to like the private conversation with the executive producer about what's really going on. Like you know, we we really went with him absolutely everywhere. And then consequently, as you were asking, we did all get very interested in the business, and all of us did work in the business in different ways since we were teenagers or you know, unofficially even earlier, and you and he had this idea that we would have a family company. So he was sort of looking at all of us to see what roles we could take within the company. And you know, some of us embraced it, some of us were a little rebellious about those roles. Ultimately, here we are, like we own the company together, we run it together. So it all did you know his wish came true? Is everyone involved in it? Not just yes to some degree. Everybody is to some degree. I mean Lisa and I really put in the most time, I guess into it, but but everyone's involved to some degree. But you know, when Lisa was talking about how he would bring us anywhere, so there was I can really only remember one time that my dad was genuinely, really really angry at me, because he didn't usually he almost never actually got angry so rarely, and there was one time he was really really angry because, as Lisa says, he would bring us anywhere. And one day I was in New York with him, where working, and they had to go do a meeting. He was with Frank Oz. They had to go do a meeting. I think it was Frank Oz, might have been David Laser, and I was just in the habit of wherever I go, I would plunk myself in the corner and read a paperback novel. So he's going to have a meeting. I don't even really know who it's with or anything. And Jackie on Nassis walks and we're just sitting anyway, We're sitting in this office waiting for my dad to have a meeting, and I take out my paperback novel and just start reading. And Jackie Nassas walks into her office to have a meeting with my dad, and my dad and I think it was Frank stood up and shook hands, and I, of course just did what I always do, which is I stayed in the corner reading my paperback novel. When we got out of that meeting, he was so angry at me. He was like, you stand up when a woman enters the room. And I'm like, I'm sorry, Dad, I didn't stand up. Oh my gosh. He was really anyone upset with me that I was that rude, awful, unruly, undisciplined. Actually, Jackie stopped reading his paperback marvels. I'm sure for everyone that like Jackie Jackie, oh, walking into a room is like yeah, but he stops everybody in their track. But he didn't know except I was so young. Yeah, yeah, so it sounds like he has. He was pretty even tempered. He didn't really get angry much, huh. He was famously even tempered and almost kind of like kind of zen pieceful through all kinds of conflict. He actually hated conflict, which is which is a step beyond being even tempered. So he's even tempered, but also really did not like conflict around him, and that that would give him a little inner conflict at those times. So you could get a little a little repressed about anger because he just didn't want conflict around him. But he was just a really genuinely up to upbeat guy who was look very much the glass half full, very much like what is if something is a challenge or difficult, Like how what can we learn from this? Like you know, so many of those those values of just being genuinely positive looking for opportunities to be creative and grow and learn from things like that was really what he was saying. That's so amazing and also like such a hard thing to live up to. Well, I was just about to ask, who's the most like him of the siblings. Do you think as far as disposition goes, perhaps our brother who passed away probably, Oh really, it's very sunny, sunny individual. Yeah, yeah, and mom did Did Mom appreciate conflict sometimes? Or was she also similar even tempered a little opposite opposite, loved conflict, loved to like just get into it. And consequently they didn't remain married for their whole lives, Like it didn't work out long term because you know, he really didn't want to engage in active conflict, to conflict or debate or you know, deep questioning. He actually was. He was a very in the moment kind of person and truly very I keep saying upbeat and positive. There must be a better word for that, but you know, or a deeper word for that, but it wasn't. But when we were saying our mom, I could remember her getting mad in ways that I used to love. I remember there was one time, oh my god, she threw her We were at ice cream store and some guy nearly backed up into my brother and I because he hadn't looked in his rear view mirror and he started bagging out of a parking space and almost hit us. And she just went over and threw the ice cream cone into this gas car, and then we had to leave quickly. But but the truth is it wasn't like she got angry a lot. It was a little tough for my dad because he because they co founded the company, so they create they created the Muppets together, and then my mom was suddenly so full time mom because she was pregnant for five years straight, and so he'd come home from work all exhausted, and all he wanted to know was how were we, how was school? And she wanted to talk to him about work. She wanted to know how work was going, how the Muppets were doing, and he didn't want to have that conversation because he was tired and he'd been finishing. So that was sort of when Lisa says it was a little conflict between them, it was that was usually at the at the heart of what the conflict was. Do you think there was resentment? You know, just like, God, damn it. I love our kids and I know I know this is where I'm at, buts raising there and this is something we did together, and I should be there both of our dreams a little bit. Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense. It makes sense. I mean, at the at the end of the day, it also is a very different generation and it might have been different if you know it was today. I can totally relate to both of their situations from my dad. Yeah, and she found a great role for herself sort of in the puppetry community because while it wasn't easy for her to dip in and out of the day to day of running a big business. You just can't do that, like you're either in it or you're not in it. And for her, it was better for her to not be in it. And but she was so so good to the puppetry community, you know, so good at discovering new talent, at helping people in other you know, other puppet troops and other parts of the puppetry world like the theater puppeteers and international puppeteers. And she became like very beloved as a as a mentor and a teacher and all of that. And yeah, she taught, she taught puppetry. So most of our puppeteers were initially of that generation. We're initially found by how old were you guys when when they split up? It was like early eighties, Yeah, okay, so they were so you were yeah you were a little older. Yeah, Yeah. Was it hard on the family because you were older or didn't. Did that make it a little easier. It was really good because they had different they were in different places, you know. I think for me, I think it was one of those divorces that I was eager to see happened, and I found they got along better when they weren't living together. Yeah, I mean, we're all We're all products of divorce. That's what it is. Article inspired by bold graphic elements eighties postmodernism articles. Newest Look features pops of pastels, jewel tones, playful touches for a no rules approach that's refreshing, right and inviting. No rules. 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As a woman, do you think growing up seeing your mom, you know, she founded this and didn't necessarily was able to follow it through. Did that kind of inform the things that you wanted to do as a woman and how you see your work relationship. Yeah? I was so different from my mom that and sometimes I would question, like am I even a woman? Like I'm so I was following my dad every step of the way, Like what can I do to be more like him? In every way? So, you know, he was my role model, He was my mentor icon and every way. I took me a really long time to relate to my mom until I had kids my own. I didn't understand almost anything that she did or what And then I had a tremendous understanding. You know, as soon as I had kids, I was like, oh, this is huge, Like this is this is really really amazing. You can make the meaning of your life about kids. But I, you know, I had kids a little bit later, and I had a big career, and and I I just yeah, I was more defined by not being like her as I was growing up. And were you so when you had kids, were you able to sort of balance that career and kids, and was that informed by the way you grew up? Well, I think I balanced all of her. He's an armchair psychologist. You don't have to answer, And yeah, I think I balanced it. But I've been working full time the whole time I've been raising my kids, and so, you know, you would there would occasionally be questions like, well, why do you work so hard? Why do you work full time? Why do you just work half time? Since your mom, I was like, well, as I said before, it's like, I think you're either in it or you're out of it. Like you know, to me, I'm in it. And I like to think that the pleasure that I get from the work and the quality of what we do and all of those things I hope would be encouraging to my kids about having careers of their own or getting or being being creatively connected to what they do. And you know, I'd like to think that I'm being a role model. But you know, I didn't spend as much time with my kids as my nanny did. So well, hanging out, oh god, I know we were clearly our dad is. He was the one who was setting the role model of being a functioning adult and I don't know. I think in our family, I think what we do, what our work is is too is a little bit too important. It's in our heads, and I think we're all just a little bit too much trying to define ourselves by what we do, and and that creates I think natural like insecurities and stuff like that. I think that what I do has been too important to me deep inside, and it makes you a little bit crazy. It makes you a little bit crazy. And I think all of us siblings are a little bit crazy in our families. I think a little bit of that came from our being too important. What you do is just too important. But you but you recognize, you know that, but you still just like, oh, like I'm still crazy. It's still crazy. Yeah, you do have to remind yourself like it's just it's just television. It's just it's just puppetry, you know. But that's like telling the monarchy like you're just a prince, Like it's legacy stuff, you know. So you see, and you grow up with your parents not only working so hard, but caring so much about what they're putting out into the world, like you feel you do feel a little bit of this sort of duty to that legacy to not let them down. Is there pressure there? I know I feel that way. Yeah, No, there's no pressure that what they were joll saying was there pressure? And I was like, oh my god, are you kidding? I was twenty seven when I had to take over the company my dad. I was twenty six when he died. Twenty seven, want to see you? The pressure was so horrible. Yeah, it was so horrible. Is wrong? Terrifying? Yeah, terrifying is what it was. But when I made them up at Christmas Carl, I was twenty eight, and I was terrified, terrified throughout all of it, and the pressure to not screw up was so horrible. But it also made me really close with everyone I was working with. Everybody was so supportive, so it was also very rewarding at the end. But yeah, for me, certainly for me. Lisa started her career, she was more in the studio system and Warner Brothers in Columbia, whereas I was freelance when my dad died. I was like, yeah, I was freelance, but at least half the work I was doing was with my dad, and I was a puppeteer and special effects and a director of TV stuff. But yeah, no, the Yeah, the pressure was really intense. I was so terrified of screwing it up. And I would say, I mean your father, he was fifty three right when he passed away. Fifty three, I mean that's so young. I mean, you guys were young, I would think and correct me if I'm wrong. That the not only that pressure, but just having to mourn it was very difficult. And I reach out sometimes to other people who lose a famous family member to say, to remember to mourn for yourself, you know, because you have to somehow like address so many total strangers and media and all this, and you forget that you have like yourself to take care of during all of that, you know. But and yeah, fifty three was really really young. Obviously nobody was expecting it, and the company was turned upside down instantly, and it was very hard. We didn't I personally didn't feel any grief for a year. And then about a year later, I like had a huge panic attacks and anxiety and it all like landed on me. But for a year I was like a robot, Like just a robot dealing with this. Was he was really I think my dad was alive in my dreams. Still is probably still is two nights a week, but for probably fifteen years it was seven nights a week, seven nights a week. He was there in my in my dreams, and yeah, because we never we were we didn't really get to grieve. We just sort of had to take over, right, I mean it had to take over. But also the whole world. It's like it's like everybody else took the In one way, it was the illusion was that it was comforting when the whole world is is mourning for what you feel is your loss, but they feel it all is their loss. The whole world, the whole world was morning when Jim Henson died. And so at first you feel like this is this is comforting because everyone's in this with me, And then you realize you kind of got lost in the mix and you never got a chance to process it yourself or something. Now I'm not being clearly, you are totally understand. I feel like it's it's it's like anything else that just outshines even your own mourning process. You're like, it's so big for everybody else, and therefore like I have to be there to kind of stay stay sturdy. I think that's right. How how did you feel once once you made that first piece and you had to take over and that pressure, was it alleviated once you realize like, wait a minute, I can do this? You know, was there that moment I still don't know that I can do that? You still don't know? Well, Lisa and Lisa run Lisa runs the company. Now, yeah, I don't know. You always have a no, you have a Listen to me. I'm not an arrogant person. I come across as very arrogant, But the truth is, I have tons of self doubt, so I'm always I'm always worried that what I'm doing isn't isn't as good as people are saying. They're saying it's good to be nice to me. You know. It was like one when I made that movie Happy Time Murders and the and the whole country hated it. I was like, finally, somebody's telling me the truth. Finally. Funny. What how do you guys work together? You guys have a good working relationship. Well, we do very different We're very we do very different things. You know. I came up through in the business, through being an executive and a producer, and he came up through being a performer and a director, and so we kind of we definitely meet in the middle in terms of running the company, and Brian ran the company for many years and then he decided he would focus more on the directing and the show running. And then I just so I've been the CEO for a while, but I think I protected myself from some of these fears that Brian has had by just never putting myself out there creatively on the same level. Like because I don't direct and because I don't write and I don't perform, you know, I'm being a producer. You're back like you're behind the camera. You're behind the scenes, and you get to be a little bit more emotionally protected from the scariness of doing your own creative work. But Darling, you are still a puppeteer, don't you know. You're still building the streams. I see what you're saying. It's interesting, But speaking of puppet puppetry and puppeteering, it's it is interesting. With my father, when he was in his forties and fifties, he started to kind of realize that he was one of the only really successful puppeteers and that you know, puppeteers in general are just struggling and it was such a you know, not respected art form. So he started helping other puppeteers through his foundation that he set up and through making you know, bringing people over from overseas to perform in America. So it's interesting both of our the sisters who are not on this podcast, both of them are really really active with philanthropy and helping other puppeteers through the Found Puppets, through the Jim Henson found Yeah, that he has a Jim Henson Foundation, and then also the museums that put out Jim's work, which is in Atlanta at the Side for Puppetry Arts and also in New York at the Museum of the Moving Image. And so you know, both Cheryl and Heather are really good to the puppeteers. And I think that's so important because you know, Jim was taking that responsibility on himself, you know, when when he was getting older. How big is that art form? I mean, would you consider it, like a lot of people consider jazz a dying art form, which makes me incredibly sad. I hope it's not the case, and I hope it you know, I think the arts always abs and flows. But would you say that puppeteering still like maintains or is it kind of few and far between that people go down that path. It's been small our whole lives. It's a pretty small community and it's not much bigger than it was. I will say that the work that like my sisters have done and Jim have they've done a lot to help the art, the art puppetry world. So, you know, artistic puppeteers who want to do theater, there are a lot more opportunities for them, a lot more theaters interested in it than there was in the seventies and eighties. But you know, it's still a pretty small world, very very intimate. People really know each other. Most puppeteers are very introverted until they put a puppet on, so you know, they they get to really exercise their alter egos and stuff like that through the puppets. Puppeteers are weird people, puppet the whole puppet. They are really weird people. I think. I think Lisa is right. It's been a small community. It's continues to be a small community. But they're really we're really crazy people. I do remember going to all these puppeteers in America conventions and stuff like that and going, wow, they're really crazy. They're kind of really crazy people, but crazy not in an angry mean way, but crazy and are really weird. They're just really weird people. It's going to be so appreciated by the public. Look what we're doing for puppeteers today. No weird is good is a good thing. I think the thing is is that we're losing sight of all the weirdness because everything has to be so perfect now. It's like the arts are weird, we're weird people, and it should be embraced. How are some of these characters created? You know, I mean, is it is it the puppeteer themselves or do you do you guys create some of these characters. It's that they come out of like they come out of basically three places, the puppet characters. So it's either the writer has created a character on the page and has and has described the character and it's come from the script, and then and then we'll do designs, will pair up the character with the puppet, the right performer, and then it and then it becomes a character. But it can also come out of the designers, and sometimes a designer we call There are some puppets that are fabricated with no plan, and like with the Muppet Show or the Muppet movies, when they start making the background characters, often the p the puppet builders are building puppets on their desk where they don't really have a complete plan of exactly how that puppet's going to come out, and that's really that creates some really cool puppets. And then that puppet builder will will show that puppet to the to the puppeteers, and then and then somebody will go, I've got a voice for that character, and it will come up that way, and it can come from puppeteers, and literally, like if I pull like my favorite characters, they're pretty much a third to third a third. It might have come up from the writers, it might come up from the public builders. And then some of them are out of the puppeteers. So like Bill Baretta does Pepe the Prawn in the Muppets nowadays. And I've known Bill since he was a little kid, and Pepe the Prawn, that crazy character is his wife's mother thing or his wife's his wife's aunt, and he would do an impersonation of his wife's aunt. And then it was like, we've got to make a puppet of that. And so sometimes it comes out performers, sometimes out of the writers and sometimes out of the designers, which is kind of cool. Different ways. How was Kermit and miss b like, do you how was what was the what was the conception? Well, Kermit is so old. Kermit is one of the very very first So Lisa, can you want to jump on Kermit? Kerrman pay you're very different? Well, Kermit was famously sewn from a green a green felt coat of my father's mother, my grandmother, and the spring coat. Imagine that color is a little bit strange for a coat, but that is that's the truth. And you know my mom, uh wasn't and Kermit wasn't a frog. He was just a Kermit. He was Kermit, the creature. He didn't have the collar of that crime. He didn't have he had human feet, not not flippers. But in the first Kermit okay, yeah, but he sewed him when he was kind of he made him himself, and he made him when he was really young, like still a teenager. And my mom said that my father's grandfather was dying and that he was taking it was like sitting by his side, you know, for multiple days. And that was when he happened to make Kerman and I was like, wow, that's so interesting. It's very deep. But in any case, he was always considered a bit of an alter ego for my dad because he was in every almost every production that did involve muppets, you know, unless it was a dark crystal type of thing. Almost all the other productions had Kermit in some manner, and he became the face of the show. And he was very close to my father's personality but a little different, but it's close. They're like alter egos. And it was interesting because it was first it was Kermit that was like that, that hosty lead character. Then for a little while it was Ralph's the dog when our dad was doing Ralph on the Jimmy Dean Show, the Variety Show, and Ralph was so for a little wow, Ralph was our dad's main character. He was the lead muppet for a while, Ralph, and then after the Jimmy Gaine Show, it kind of then it went back to Kermit, and Kermit became the Kermit that we know. But those two characters are clearly the ones that are the most important to our death was Ralph the Dog and Kermit the Frog. When I think of Oliver, right, and this is like one of those things that when he was little he loved the rainbow connection that was. That's like still that's like Oliver's number one Willie Nelson version two is so good. Yeah, So Oliver I always think of whenever I think of, like, I love that song still like makes me cross, Yeah, Oliver emotions all great? What about the voice? Was that? And was that a just natch? Was it? Boom? Right there? Kermit's voice? This is Kermit's older than us, so now we're we're talking about But basically he just put a gooey thing into his voice. That's it. So Kermit is basically Jim Henson, but he then puts everything into a little gooey, a gooey machine. He sort of guys up his voice and then it becomes Kermit and it pitched up a little bit from where our dad's voice was. But other than that, there's not a lot the gooey thing that was what he did. I want to touch a little bit on school and Lisa, you went to Harvard and then you were also the first female president of the Harvard Lampoon, And I do want to know a little bit about that, because I think that's really cool. How did that happen? It was really fun. I mean, the Lampoon is a is a comedy magazine that the school that is published by this club, which is the Harvard Lampoon. And when I went to Harvard, I didn't feel like I fit in that much. Actually, we went to public school in armank and I was aware that I had much less of a good education than a lot of the kids that I met at Harvard. It was like they were so many private school kids. They had studied Latin and Greek, and I was just overwhelmed on a certain level. But the people that I immediately just hooked into and I felt such common ground with them were the kids that were on the Lampoon. And then I realized after I joined this Lampoon that I had known other Lampoon members in my childhood that were friends with my father. So Michael Frith, who was the designer of many many of the muppets, he had been on the lampoon, Christopher Serf, who has been at Serf's son, and Fred Gwynn, who was Herman Munster, who was a friend of who was like kind of a neighbor of ours, a friend of my father's. So I had known these Lampoon people. So I suddenly felt like I had like kind of found my tribe. And it's funny you were saying before, kid that you know, we're all like we're like circus people, you know, like creative people are weird or they're they're scruffy, and they're they're not perfect. And so when I found the Lampoon, it was kind of like those were my circus people, like, you know, as Harvard was a little too perfect and the Lampoon was a little more imperfect and felt more right for me. And so I was a graphic I was an artist and did a couple of covers and graphics stuff for them. I wasn't a writer. The real superstars of the Lampoon are always the comedy writers. And there's still huge in Hollywood, like huge, Like there's some years where the Comedy Emmy is just like four out of five of the nominees will be Lampoon people. Yeah, so it's still really big. But I was a little I was a little bit of a misfit even amongst the Lampoon people by being an artist and not a writer, right, and then you became president, and did it register to you that you were the first female to not at all? It was it was my one of my worst surprises was to wake up the next day and realize that it was news. I was completely unprepared. I did horrible interviews for the Today Show and Newsweek and all these things. And so one thing that I would that I learned from that, and I've kind of taken it with me as an adult, is if somebody ever tells you you need media training to do something, you must do the media training. Don't. Don't do a bunch of interviews not prepared. I try for me, he still wings. Oh god, That's why I'm so good at them. But when you're a first I would think that there would be a little bit of like pride, Yeah, like wow, that's I mean eventually made me now looking at it didn't seem to me that that would matter at all for you know, in terms of bigger news. Because there actually had been women on the Lampoon for ten years, there just hadn't been a president of the Lampoon who was a woman. Yeah, and you know it continues to I continue to be surprised when things make news like that. But Lisa, what so, you know, your CEO, you're sort of in the business side of things, but you're an artist. You know, what are what are your creative outlets? Where is your artistry? Do you do? You just put that into your business pretty much, But it just put it into putting people together and putting you know, putting ideas with talent with people. And I don't draw anymore. I did really enjoy being I was very very artistic as a little kid, Like when Brian was talking about that those art project days. I was a huge project maker and you know, I wasn't afraid to draw or try to make anything. But you know, my interest now is making things on a bigger scale, and you know, the productions are creative and we it's kind of embarrassing. It's like, yeah, I give really good creative notes. I'm really great with structure. Having a father like Jim and then taking over the company for so many years, is there ever a struggle of maintaining what he would have wanted and where you want to grow? Does that ever? Does that ever become conflicting. Yeah, no, no, no no, it's really it's really hard and initially and then Lisa picked it up after I did it for a bunch of years. But yeah, it's tough because you're always trying to protect the legacy and let the legacy grow. But then, like our dad's number one creative advice is, don't ever copy yourself. You know, don't ever if it's not original, if it's not new, don't do it. Don't invest your time, your energy, just don't do it because it's just not good enough. I mean, he's the guy who canceled The Muppet Show at the end of season five when it was like the most successful show of the world I've ever seen, and he was like, I'm done. I'm done. I've done five seasons. I can't I don't have another. I'm going to start repeating myself now. So so so so it was tough because because people would always say, so do you always try to think what would Jim have done in this moment, And then he said, yeah, well what he would have said was be original. So that's hard. So it's kind of you know, so it was always a little bit hard, but definitely for me and I'm sure Lisa's feeling the same way. Try trying to guide the creative effort of the company to always be in sync with that the big mission of Jim Henson, and then always trying to be original at the same time. And then I've had little little tangents like my Happy Time Murders movie that the world hated, that my dad wouldn't have made that, and uh and and I have a show called puppet Up Uncensored, which is a blue puppet show that does a live show. That's actually that one's very successful and popular, which is fun. So where is that show? Where is that I put it? I just put it up. Well, it's a live show nowhere now, So it's nowhere now, nobody right theater right now. It's a theater show. I just did. I would, let's say last year, meaning nineteen. I had it up at not Scary Farm Cool for a while, but I would chore it and then I put it up in the in the studio. It's just a fun it was improv puppet show. Really really, it's really fun. Actually, we staged it a lot at our lot on the on Librea so people could come and watch the show but also get a little it'll look at our our studio, which is pretty private, so became that was that was the most fun I think when you were putting up that show on the lot. I hope we can do it again. That's where I was, right, Was I in? I was in? Was it Charlie Chaplin's office? Is that That's where I was? That was cool? Yes, yes, ur the what is currently the Henson Lot as originally the Charlie Chaplin Lot. It's the little tutor looking buildings along Librea near Sunset, and it also has some very cool people own it in between, including a really long ownership by A and M Records, So Herb Albert you had it for years. We have a beautiful recording studio that's historical that they built, but there's layers of history. There's kind of fun that there's layers of history there though, where you have the Chapelain history. It was owned by a few other people, including Red Skelton who speaking of variety shows like he owned it at one point, and then many years owned by A and M Records. So it has all this rock and roll history and now on top of that the puppetry and the motion capture and all the kind of animation and things that we do there. So it's really it's a less than a square block, but you know, got a lot of history packed into it. What you're doing is historical. Do you ever feel that way times the spirit that the whole principle of puppetry is bringing something inanimate to life? Sometimes they have even even the Magic Castle sometimes brings in puppeteers because there's something like when they bring the beautiful marionettist there because even though he's not doing magic, he's doing marionette. But it's there is something where you where you do feel like, oh it's magic. It actually looked completely alive, and so I think there is a little bit of that in the in the nature of puppetry. And then of course, like we've grown up with it and we understand how it's all done, so you know, you there's no we can never say, oh, oh my gosh, I thought it was alive, Like we're never We're going to always be the insiders to it. But even so, there are times when you when you're sort of like sit back and go, you know, that is really a startlingly good effect, or that is really a startlingly convincing moment, like even what you were saying about Ned talks and the character of Ned on the on the show, we got six people pulling making one performance. And by the way, doesn't Ned's voice sound exactly like Brian? Yes, and yeah, I think it's him. So it's six people impersonating Brian, and it's like and it's a giant alien. Yeah, but it is. It's kind of But when it's so seamless like that, there's a little bit of a magical I was in awe. I mean I was in awe. It was amazing because those little dudes, I forget what you called them, popping up and down the clause, the clause yeah, law and it was all of these crazy talent, Oh, totally psychedelic, these talented people just creating this whole world. And I'm sitting there improving with with I don't even know what some voice over here, and and I remember leaving thinking that was one of my favorite times doing anything as a performer. Well, you you were particularly fun to work with. I've actually been calling you out as I've been doing publicity and all for the show. I often call out your interview because I I think we had the most funding. It was fun. I am like I did have a moment of like, okay, East Coast, I'm looking at Kermit your dad like like like I'm thinking like Timothy Leary, like did your dad just drop a ton of acid? Did he at all mushroom? No? And both. And he liked to drink the way the way he drank wine was embarrassing, Like I learned how to drink wine from him, and he would drink like in a big wine glass, like a third of a glass of white wine and then it was a spritzer like the rest of you. Yeah. No. And they were like everybody thought of my mom and dad is they were like hippies. They were like, you guys are the hippies, and they would dress like hippies and every thing. But it was everything except for the drugs they were. They were very they were very cling up. And also it's like he didn't he didn't need he didn't need anything to help liberate his volcano of imaginary boss. Did your mom have a puppet? Like? Was she was? She was? She voiced? I mean was like your dad was sort of Kermit, you know, was mom miss picky? Well? She like we were saying she was very involved before we were born. Yeah, so, but in those days most about most of what they did was lip syncing to existing tracks like Louis Prima. They loved to like do puppets lip syncing to Louis Prima and other things. So there wasn't a lot of voice performance. But yeah, our mom was a really good puppeteer and she trained all the puppeteers. So she was a puppeteer, but there weren't famous puppets that she performed for. She was very or no or no puppet. That sort of was her personality, you know, or nothing like that. So with five kids, how many how many cousins? And how many kids do you all have that are all cousins? Yeah? Eight, there's eight we all have. We had two kids each except for one of my sisters is single, so there's four. Four siblings have two kids each. I think it's fair. And we all and we and we all had our kids a little bit older. I think it's interesting. We all came out of a big family and none of us went, oh, all I want is to have my own big family. Yeah, one maybe two kids. Do you guys all get this? Do you get to see each other. I mean, forget COVID for a second, but are you guys pretty tight? You get together on holidays and you know or often often, yes, particularly Thanksgiving, but not not this last Yeah. Yeah. Is it usually La New York? Or does everybody go to Colorado? We we have It's really interesting. We've been having Florida. We've been having thanksgutting in Florida because my father bought a little cottage in Florida in the days that the Muppets were going into disney World and he was planning to spend a ton of time there in Florida, so he bought a little cottage and we go there at Thanksgiving. So that's been our We got our team. Yeah, we kept the cottage and nobody lives down there, so we all would go. We go most Thanksgivings and then we I mean, the cool thing is we're all we're because we all own the company together. We also have our business meetings like four times a year where we have to and that's so it's weird. It's kind of holds us together as well. We all get to see each other a lot, but this last year it's been all zoom it's all, yeah, do you guys agree or are there a lot of disagreements? Actually, really in terms of the company, do we agree a lot? We agree a lot. And we went through one period of time it was like in the early two thousands where we did in quick succession a bunch of business deals that were very complicated. So it was about ten years after my dad died. We sold the company, we bought it back, we sold them up It's to Disney, we launched something else, and in that period of time we realized, like, these are not the transactions that people do very well in family companies if they don't get along. And everything went really, really smoothly. So you know, even though we have sibling conversations, like there are times when we are just a family and we might disagree about family things, when it comes to business, we were like very in sync and very easy to do business with actually, you know, because we're not like people don't have to kind of psych out like what are the family dynamics if you want to work with a Henson company, like you just don't have to think about that, right do you have where memorabile like up the wazoo? I mean, you know, we were really we do. But we were also really careful to get it into museums because because the things that have been built over the years, they're so beautiful, Like you know, a lot of those puppets are pieces of artwork and the amount of handwork that went into all of them. So you know, the early the puppets from the early years were sought after by museums. Now it is the things we make. They're still really artistic, but it's a little bit harder to figure out where to put them all because they're not all of historical importance. What about what about Kerrmit the first coat the Kermit made out of the coat? Is that the Smithsonian? Yeah, yeah, yeah, our mom got like the very earliest muppets. They're all at the Smithsone. Okay, that was something that our mom did before before we speed around. I got to know about Miss Piggy because she was such a staple in my life. Oh she was just so different. It was, yeah story, she was my first crush, like attracted to her for some strange reason. I like that sort of gruff, you know, like you know, it was that's my kind of woman. Frank used to describe her character as she's a truck driver who thinks she's Marilyn Monroe. Hilarious. She came in with a Muppet Show, so she became part of the starring cast of a new show. So she had no history before the Muppet Show. But she wasn't even in the original main cast of The Muppet Show. She wasn't like one of the characters who was drawn out and sketched out by the by the writers. When you were talking about where did the characters come from, this one came really from Frank Oz as a performer, imbuing a very supporting character like this pig. Puppet was just in the chorus, and in the very early he wasn't even he wasn't even the only he wasn't right, he wasn't the only one who did the character. But when he did it, it was so funny. But there was the first thing that happened was there were just a bunch of pigs created and and then they threw, you know, put a wig on one of them, and and Frank came up with this personality and this character, and that was it. But but she came a lot like obviously a lot later, not until I'm up at show it is funny that she's the classic course girl. You know, she's the classic story of the chorus girl who came to the front and took the took the solo and then became the lead of the show because she was literally a chorus girl. Pig. Wow, that's really funny. It's like, it's like what are you called Twenty Feet from Stardom the documentary, It's like her and then she and and and then she went for a big makeover. So if you look at her very first, it was really like a pig puppet with a wig on. And but that's really a character that that came out of Frank Oz. That was that really Yeah, what do we have to look forward to from your production company in these next couple of years? So many things, all sorts of stuff. I mean, we do what we you know, we try to say everything that we do as an element of fantastical invention in it. But but nowadays we do we do three D animated animated shows. We do two D animated shows and key ram animation. We do digital puppetry, which is three D animation, but it's all puppeteer. It's all live performed and live shop. We do all of our puppet productions, and then we do science fiction and fantasy and and we we you know, we we we do a little bit of everything, do movies, tv shows. Some of it's for a more adult audience, some of it's for specifically for kids. But but honestly, we just try. We just try for real, like creative excellence, being creative, it's a celebration of being creative and original is what we try to do whenever we're making something. People Also a lot of people expect us to kind of revisited the old titles, and we do. You know, we did the Big Dark Crystal series for Netflix. We are now doing a new Fragle Rock series. There's a lot of love for fragle Rock out. I was like, that was like art was let the music play making for on nother days. I think down Fragle Rock. It was part of this new thing called HBO, and we remember our dad really loved the idea of HBO because I think up until then the idea that basically what you're doing is you're making TV shows so that there will be people watching television when the commercial break comes, and the reason of existence is to make sure there are eyeballs for when the commercial breaks happen. That's what the business and television. What's the four minutes of commercial right every half hour? Right? And so my dad he really loved the idea of h you know that was that was right, that people were actually paying money or subscription to be entertained. What would your dad think about today technology? All the platforms that are available now Netflix streaming? Would he would? He did, think he'd love it or hate it. I mean he kind of loved everything. Yeah, Like he loved innovation and new ways of doing things. I mean, he probably would be more embracive than I probably am because I'm like, oh, I've got to protect puppetry and stuff like that. He'd be like, oh, let's do something different. I don't know he would. He would love all of it. And he saw like reality TV coming. He knew that cameras were going to become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and that before you knew it, that programming was going to be coming from a twenty two year old kid and their two best friends you know, in the middle of nowhere would be producing you know, huge television shows. He kind of saw all that coming and what a shame because he would have only been eighty three, like he he could have still been alive and working and would have been and how much would he have done and how much more would he have done if he if he hadn't died, Is it? Yeah? I think it. I feel like he would have gotten incredibly interested in virtual reality as well as anything like immersive and interactive because he was so he was very interested in stereoscopic and I was like, why are you interested in that? Like the green and green and red glasses, But he was really into it and that led to him doing a three D movie at Disney. But he was really into it because of its potential for being immersive and and he was very interested in anything like interactive. So you know that he's everything has developed way, way, way beyond what he was thinking of at that point. I think one thing that's such a shame is that, you know, when he made Labyrinth, you know, with David Bowie and Jennifer Colley, the movie was a terrible flop when I came out, and that was the last big thing that he had finished before he died. And it's such a shame because the film has done substantially better every year than it did the first year it was met. So now it's a huge hit and it's a cult classic and it's the most important title in our library. And I wish he had seen that, because unfortunately when he passed away, that was his big commercial failure was Labyrinth, which is now nobody believes you. When you say to them, oh, you know, it was a huge box office failure, they go, no, it couldn't have been. It couldn't have been. It's a classic. It is your dad. I have this little thing here that I love when he wrote a letter before he passed away and he said, please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It's a good life. Enjoy it Is that like a touchstone for you guys, very much. So. Yes, I think he was actually doing his estate planning and instead of just leaving a bunch of documents like we all do, he had the thoughtfulness to write a letter and enclose it in the in the documents, and the letters sat there for years and years, and you know, it wasn't particularly prescient that he wrote that. I think they were. The letter was sitting there for quite a long time along with his estate planning, but it did make me think, what a nice thing to do, and everybody should do that. Everybody should write something persons personal to go with those legal documents. Yeah, as a person, he was somebody that always had his little lessons. You know, we have like a lot of episcopal ministers in our in that side of the family, and our dad was quite like that. I mean, often we'd sit down for breakfast and he'd have basically a little lesson that he wanted to share that day over breakfast, which I can't imagine doing with my kids, not not in that sort of formal way. But but he always had his little things. And oh my god, he loved he loved the cassette playing players that you put in your cars before anybody else had when they were the eight tracks, and then the cassette players, and and he'd always have the best one, and it would always get stolen in New York and so and he just had it was you could see it was always so disappointed when we'd get back to the car after dinner and the windows were smashing again and the story was gone again, and he'd go, well, I guess obviously they needed it more than than I, wow, than I did. Yeah, socially and then we can still Yeah, that's the opposite of what I would have done. I love your dad right now, All right, guys, let's do the speed round some of these. You can also answer your other siblings. If you want one word to describe the other, I'm just gonna say smart. I would say engineer, one word to describe your relationship supportive, cool. Who's the most artistic, Oh, Brian, as between us bread, I've done more art, but I don't know that I'm more artistic. If your sibling was a muppet, which one would they be? Ned as, I said, Well, I don't know. Lisa. See, she has to be the smart cool one, sir. You know, would have to have been one of Jerry Nelson's characters like Floyd or sometimes oh male characters. I'll take it, Lloyd. I'll take it something that your sibling is really not good at. Well, look at us cooking. Yeah, we're both not good at cooking. Who's more competitive? We're both crazy competit. Are you equal? Equal? Yeah? We're both crazy competitive. Fact that that's part of why we we approach things. And like, Lisa came out of development an executive, and I came from the floor, so that we're always a little bit different, so we're never like directly competing with each other. Right, that's good. That was very clever. That's a that's a good thing. Who gives the best advice? Me? Oh, that's so interesting. No, actually it is. It is Lisa, because I'm terrified of giving people advice. I don't want to give people advice if if you guys disagree, or when you do disagree, is there a topic that you disagree on the most? You know, is there something that you guys just do not see eye to eye on? This one just ought to be at the people of my tongue, and I can't think what do we disagree? I don't know. I mean there is something when it comes to actual like movie making, or when I say movie making, I mean TV shows or whatever, where I have less respect for the committee than Lisa does. I grew up on the floor. I have more respect for the vision. But that's good. I like stru that's a good one. First celebrity crush mine was Debbie Harry. Yeah, that's a good good It almost it was almost Linda Ronstad, but then it was Debbie Harry. I'm I'm like blanking out, I say, but I have a feeling it has to do with that first season of Saturday Night Live. We the Muppets were on Saturday Night Live, and we got to go from the whole the whole first season, we got to go and watch Saturay Live. And that was like when I felt like I grew up from being the high schooler that I was at public high school in armad, New York, to like a cool person that goes to New York City and goes to thirty Rock and watches Saturday Night Live and comes home and tells people at school that I was there and saw it live. The season one, two and three. Really it was just season one. But you're like, like eleven, I was like eleventh grade or tenth or eleventh grade, so it was probably like it was. It was probably like Chevy Chase or something. You're like, it's the seventies, you're a teenager. Seventies, you're a teenager and you're at thirty Rock watching SNL. Pretty cool at season one. I mean, nothing's cooler that's all the time. For sure, it was Chevy Chase because cha Chase was hot. That's so that's so interesting, I think. But Lisa, weren't you a big fan of Jack Burns when you were like really little? And then he became the head writer on the Muppet Show, So I thought you were a big fan, but now that's really little. Burns and Driver was a show that was really important in our household, and then Jack Burns ended up being the head writer on the Muppet Show. Yeah, I had a childhood like, we got to meet this guy that had been so important. All right, Seriously, nobody who's listening to your podcast knows these people. But I had a I did have a childhood crush on tommy'smothers. The I like comedians. Yeah, it was Chevy Chase, it was John Belushi, Gilbe Radner, dan Ackroyd. Belus was the first year. No, yeah, yeah, he was so cool. I remember because I remember him going around the halls going, oh what oh, here they come, the mucking foppits. They didn't actually witness that, did You absolutely witnessed that witness that. I thought that was an apocryphal story. That's no. Walking down the hall was the mocking fops very lovingly. No, no, I heard it in the hall. I mean the poor muppets, you know, they were really really a big flop on Sorry, they were really cool that we got to go and see it. The Muppets were like the only thing that didn't work on Starry Life. So it was this outrageous, huge, huge hit and everybody was talking about and it was the show of even it's the show of the century practically, and the Muppets got fired off a bit for after season one. Okay, yeah, but no, but let's let's go. And because you were it's kay earlier, we're saying, but what really happened was Jim was trying very hard to make the Muppet Show and all of the broadcasters in America said, Muppets are for little children. That's what Sesame Street has proven. The Muppets are just for little kids. And my dad was furious. So he made his first pilot of the Muppet Show was Valentine's Special with the Valentine's with Mia Farrow. That was going to be with your Mom, but it was with Mia Farrow, and he made that and it went on air and that was his pilot, and all three networks passed and said no, no, no, Puppets are for little kids, and Sesame Street you should be sticking with that. He was furious, so the next pilot. He then sold a second pilot for the Muppet Show and he called it sex and Violence with the Muppets so that people wouldn't say it was just our little kid. And he made that and put it on air, and all three networks passed on doing the series, and then he was Then he was so pissed off that everybody was saying you should just be doing children's shows like Sesame Street. That then he went and did Satura Night a lot because it was there already controversially going to be the most offensive adult TV show ever made of its time. So he's like, that's where I'm going to be. I'm going to prove that I'm not just for little kids. And then during that season, one Lou Grad in London, who ran ITV or at a TV studios was it, called and said, I've seen your pilot. Bring your Muppets here to England. I will make a serial, we will shoot the whole series and we'll sell it back to America, which is exactly what happened. So you're saying he got fired, but Lisa as soon as Lou Greig wanted to make a Muppet show he was counting the days until he could get off at Sesame Street. That was it was, I mean, get off of Saturday Night Love, because all he really was trying to do is get the Muppet Show made. That's yeah, he was creating a ruppet show for years and years and years and years. It's really interesting because people think he had so much just autom matic success, but like how much rejection he had for the Muppet Show was incredible. The success of Sesame Street was a problem because he was sort of on a track that was pointing to the Muppet Show, and then Sesame Street was so successful that everybody was like, well, make more preschool education shows. I think it's really important for any creative to hear these kinds of stories because I'm always like, success is like you hear more know than you do. Yes, and and yet you just have to keep going to know that the Muppets took so long. It's wild, right, it was really hard for it. Okay, I have to ask what's your personal favorite Muppet? Ralph the Dog m He's great. I usually say I can't answer this, it's all it's it's still good. Good give it to them. You've never told anybody your favorite Muppet, they were, Yeah, I like her for different reasons, but I guess gon So probably it was my fa Gonzo's Gonzo is the greatest. Does anybody ever say that Kermit is their favorite? I mean it's like I feel like, because he's like the number one, nobody says he's the favorite. No, No, most people. Most people do say Kermit's their favorite. And I often say Kermit's kind of my favorite because he was the most like my dad. I mean, Kermit was if you know camp Kermit, well you knew my dad. Well. Okay, So the very last question that we always ask all you asked the question two parter, two part question, first part being if you could alleviate something, If you could take something from your sibling that will alleviate a stressor in their life or something to make their life a little bit better, what would it be? And on the flip side of that, if you could take something for yourself, a quality that they possess that you wish that you had, what would that be? Huh? Well, I Brian was speaking earlier about feeling pressure and stress of living up to the legacy. I'd love to take some of that off of him, because I think he's great in his own right, and I would like to take a little of his perfectionism onto me because I think as a producer, I need to get things done, and so I'm I'm like, hey, let's just approve seventy five percent of everything we look at, you know, because we just got to get going. So if I could take some of his perfectionism on knee so that our work is better, if I could afford to do that, I definitely want to do that. I don't know what I would take off of Lisa. I don't know. I know of burdens that she has that are too personal to talk about, but you can like say that for certain burdens, I want to take them away you didn't have to have that are not of her making. And then if I could be able to multitask, I feel like I'm incapable of multitasking. For me, multitasking means I do one thing for an hour, then something else for an hour. I can't even I can't even like do two three emails at the same time. It's like I have to stay with that email until I'm done with it, and then I do the next time lest it says, well, I can manage eight shows. It's like, I don't know what that means. I can like, I can delegate seven. That was excellent. Thank you guys, so much, so much fun talking to you. It's our dinner party. It's been really, really fun and lovely talking to sibling. Revelry is executive produced by Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. Producer is Alison, President, editor is Josh Wendish. Music by Mark Hudson aka Uncle Mark. If you want to show us some rate the show and leave us a review. This show is powered by simplecast mmm