Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Summer Press Tour
Beverly Hills, Calif. — Even though they have broken up, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy have a new show premiering on ABC on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 8 p.m.
“We’ve gone our separate ways romantically,” Kermit said Tuesday during The Muppets’ TCA summer press tour panel. “It can be tough to work with your ex. It can be tough to be the executive producer on your ex’s show, especially when she’s a pig.”
Miss Piggy is hosting syndicated late night show Up Late With Miss Piggy, which Kermit is executive producing.
“I’m taking a behind-the-scenes role,” Kermit said. “It’s entirely professional.”
“One of us is certainly professional,” Miss Piggy quipped.
The actual Muppets show on ABC is a behind-the-scenes mockumentary of Miss Piggy’s in-the-show late night program. It is executive produced by Big Bang Theory cocreator Bill Prady and veteran comedy writer Bob Kushell — whom Miss Piggy affectionately calls “Blob.”
The original Muppet show mocked variety shows, because they were the dominant TV form at the time, Prady said. So it makes sense that the revamped Muppets would be filmed in a mockumentary-style, like The Office and other comedies of the last decade.
Anyone who hasn’t seen the Muppets before, Kushell said, “will see this whole new world. It will feel fresh and new to them.” And those who are familiar with the characters, Kushell said, will feel a sense of nostalgia.
Even if Kermit has a new girlfriend Denise, a pig, of course. “She works in marketing at ABC,” Prady said.
Kushell said there will be a big celebrity on The Muppets each week, as the guest of Miss Piggy’s late show. “We just filmed a segment yesterday with Imagine Dragons,” Kushell said. “There will be top-notch singer-songwriters and musical acts.”
Not that Miss Piggy is at all enamored by her guests. “I just sit there and talk with then,” she said. “I don’t even know who they are sometimes.”
Other highlights from the panel included:
— Prady, who started his writing career with Jim Henson and the Muppets, said the writing process for The Muppets is the same as any other show, with a writers’ room coming up with story and then dialogue.
— Kermit opened the panel by saying he was staying in the fountain outside the Beverly Hilton and sitting on a giant stack of phone books.
— Kermit also said that, regarding his breakup with Miss Piggy, “there will be an official statement released to the press.”
