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Lisa Henson and the Mystery of Kermit's Birthday · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to another special podcast interview
• 0:09
  presented by Muppet fan site toughpigs.com.
• 0:12
  I am your host Joe Hennis. On May 9th, Kermit the Frog will
• 0:15
  be celebrating his 70th birthday.
• 0:18
  Or will he? This is a topic of mystery
• 0:21
  sourced within decades of misinformation.
• 0:24
  Investigative journalists at the Tough Pigs newsroom are
• 0:26
  dedicated to getting to the bottom of this question.
• 0:29
  And so we are bringing in a specialist.
• 0:32
  Joining me is the CEO of the Jim Henson Company, executive
• 0:36
  producer on dozens of TV shows and films, and the daughter of
• 0:39
  Jim and Jane Henson. It's Lisa Henson.
• 0:41
  Hello, Lisa. Hey Joe, so nice to be here.
• 0:45
  This might be my first appearance on Tough Pigs.
• 0:47
  I think we. Actually, we talked once before
• 0:49
  back during Turkey Hollow, which was a while ago.
• 0:52
  Wow. OK.
• 0:53
  I know you, you probably did a whole bunch of press back then.
• 0:55
  So I don't, I don't feel jilted that you don't remember the
• 0:58
  phone conversation that we had. But I'm so excited to get into
• 1:03
  this weird mystery of Kermit's birthday and your birthday.
• 1:08
  So to start with, before we get into like the actual date,
• 1:12
  Kermit is celebrating his 70th birthday this year.
• 1:15
  Either way, that's that's a true fact.
• 1:17
  That is what's happening now in. 2025 there are 70 years of
• 1:21
  Kermit the frog this year and it is also the 70th anniversary of
• 1:26
  the Jim Henson Company. It's also the 70th anniversary
• 1:29
  of Salmon Friends. So all of all of those dates
• 1:34
  sort of converge this year. So it's a really big year for
• 1:37
  the Henson Company, for Kermit, for our legacy.
• 1:40
  It's also, by the way, I know you've covered this, but Kermit
• 1:44
  doing the commencement speech at University of Maryland this year
• 1:47
  is a pretty big, pretty big deal.
• 1:48
  So yeah, yeah, it is. It's a big year for Kermit, you
• 1:51
  know. I wish that I had gone back to
• 1:54
  school so that I could have graduated with the University of
• 1:56
  Maryland class this year just to see Kermit give the commencement
• 1:59
  speech. He actually did.
• 2:02
  He did a speech the year before I graduated from Harvard.
• 2:05
  It wasn't the commencement speech.
• 2:07
  It was something called the class day speech, which is the
• 2:09
  day before commencement. They do like a lighter one.
• 2:13
  And a lot of comedians and, you know, interesting people have
• 2:17
  done that speech. And my dad did that one.
• 2:19
  So that was that was fun. And we all got to experience
• 2:22
  that. Yeah.
• 2:22
  That's. Great.
• 2:23
  I love that. So you being at the Jim Henson
• 2:26
  Company, it's celebrating the Henson Company's 70th
• 2:28
  anniversary. Are you guys doing anything
• 2:30
  special to celebrate? There are quite a few things
• 2:33
  going on in which I, oh gosh, I don't know if I can even recount
• 2:39
  them. You know, whether it's
• 2:40
  anniversary screenings and a Fathom screening and various fan
• 2:46
  events, it's, it's sort of a miscellaneous of all kinds of
• 2:51
  all kinds of things that we will be touching upon during the
• 2:53
  year. That's great because as fans
• 2:55
  that's all we really want is we just want.
• 2:57
  I think it's we want the recognition and we want to be
• 3:00
  able to play along, which I think is one of the things that
• 3:03
  we really love most about what Disney is doing with the
• 3:07
  Muppet's 70th anniversary and, you know, really celebrating a
• 3:10
  different Muppet every week for 70 straight.
• 3:12
  Weeks that's so great actually I I as a fan and a family member I
• 3:17
  got to say that is sensational that they're doing that it's
• 3:22
  also strange that it's starting at live season as well.
• 3:25
  You know 50th season. So it's a sort of a big, we have
• 3:29
  2025's, a big anniversary, you're all around.
• 3:32
  That's true. They didn't.
• 3:33
  They didn't invite Henson to play along with the 50th, did
• 3:36
  they? No, because he.
• 3:39
  Your dad was there, you know, like, I don't think.
• 3:41
  They did anything for the war. Yes, it wasn't it wasn't the
• 3:45
  most spectacular part of Saturday Night Live.
• 3:47
  So he he's definitely part of the history of Saturday Night
• 3:52
  Live, but I don't think I don't. And also, those puppets are
• 3:56
  museum pieces now. They could never have.
• 3:58
  They could never have shown up for the anniversary special.
• 4:01
  Well, you say that, but then a couple of them were recreated
• 4:04
  for the Saturday night movie that came out last year.
• 4:07
  That's true. Yeah.
• 4:08
  So we could see a little, maybe a tiny little resurgence of the
• 4:11
  Land of Gorge characters. Maybe some fans would like that.
• 4:16
  At least three of us, yeah. OK, so we're, we, we were
• 4:21
  talking about May 9th and we'll get into what it isn't in a
• 4:26
  second, but first, what is it to you?
• 4:29
  What is May 9th to you? OK, May 9th is my birthday.
• 4:32
  So I have lived my entire life like, you know, being wished a
• 4:37
  happy birthday on May 9th. And a few years ago I started
• 4:43
  like getting hearing about like how fun happy birthday, Kermit
• 4:48
  the frog all over the Internet on my birthday.
• 4:50
  And I was like, this is this is strange.
• 4:53
  We need to we need to backtrack, roll it back a little bit.
• 4:56
  I don't want to be a poor sport, but how did my birthday become
• 5:00
  Kermit the Frog's birthday all of a sudden?
• 5:03
  Yeah, and according to the Muppet Wiki, as far as we know,
• 5:08
  the first mention was on NP Rs Morning Edition in 2005.
• 5:12
  I have no idea where they got that information, unless it was
• 5:15
  just the misinformation of May 9th being the anniversary of the
• 5:18
  first episode of Sam and Friends.
• 5:20
  We've done a little bit of our own research.
• 5:23
  Karen Falk, of course, who your fans already know all about what
• 5:26
  an amazing archivist she is. So of course she did do a little
• 5:30
  bit of digging. And yeah, I just, I just, I want
• 5:35
  the headline is this is not a thing that Kermit the Frog
• 5:39
  celebrated his birthday on May 9th, You know, And if it was a
• 5:43
  thing, if it was real, if it wasn't just an Internet thing, I
• 5:47
  definitely would have heard about it before I was over 50,
• 5:50
  right. So, so that's all I'm saying.
• 5:53
  Like it, it's real now to a lot of fans and it's real to the
• 5:57
  Internet. But it, it wasn't a thing.
• 6:00
  And I don't, you know, I don't know if it deserves to be a
• 6:03
  thing, but it evidently is 1 now.
• 6:06
  So when Karen did a little bit of research, she found out that
• 6:10
  a calendar was published in 2005, I think by Disney that
• 6:18
  showed May 9th as Kermit's birthday.
• 6:21
  And I guess they must have decided his birthday would be
• 6:26
  the premiere date of Sam and Friends.
• 6:29
  So, but accurately to be most accurate, the premiere date of
• 6:33
  Salmon Friends, which apparently was May 9th, 1955.
• 6:37
  I never knew that when we were growing up.
• 6:39
  We didn't talk about that particularly.
• 6:41
  But that would most accurately only be the anniversary of
• 6:44
  Salmon Friends because actually the Henson Company was
• 6:48
  incorporated. Muppets Inc was incorporated in
• 6:50
  A at a different time and Kermit was created at a different time.
• 6:55
  He was created a couple months earlier in March and was used on
• 7:00
  television in that TV show Afternoon.
• 7:02
  That was done before Sam and Friends.
• 7:05
  So if you want to say that a fictional character was born, he
• 7:11
  would have been born a couple months earlier.
• 7:14
  This is, I feel like we're breaking the story wide open.
• 7:17
  It's just, it's just fascinating.
• 7:20
  So, so OK, so you you mentioned that that you would never heard
• 7:23
  of Kermit's birthday being May 9th until you were much older.
• 7:27
  So you didn't have to like fight over birthday cake with Kermit
• 7:31
  when you were growing up. You never had that I.
• 7:33
  Think that's what is the most creepy about this idea to me is
• 7:37
  that if it had been a thing in in our childhood, like, would I
• 7:43
  have had to share a birthday cake with Kermit the Frog?
• 7:46
  Like it sounds like a scene out of Edgar Bergen's household, you
• 7:51
  know, with like Candy having to compete for attention with, with
• 7:55
  Charlie McCarthy. And a very big coincidence is
• 7:58
  Candice Bergen's birthday really is May 9th.
• 8:01
  So when I was yes. So when I was growing up, I was
• 8:04
  well aware that she had the same birthday as me and that Edgar
• 8:08
  Bergen's daughter had the same birthday as Jim Henson's
• 8:11
  daughter. And I always read those stories
• 8:15
  about, you know, Charlie McCarthy being treated like a
• 8:18
  real person in their home. And I felt a little bit sad
• 8:22
  about that because we didn't treat puppets as real in our
• 8:26
  home. Right.
• 8:27
  Yeah, Yeah, that's what I've always heard is that your dad
• 8:29
  wasn't precious about the characters in that way, which I
• 8:33
  guess is nice. It's like, I mean, so my
• 8:35
  birthday falls on a holiday. So I do have like that kind of
• 8:38
  like, well, are you celebrating my birthday or you're
• 8:40
  celebrating the holiday? And so you didn't have the same
• 8:42
  thing on May 9th of like, well, some people are celebrating
• 8:44
  Kermit and some people are celebrating.
• 8:46
  Me and never heard it. Never heard of it till like in
• 8:49
  the mid like 2010 or so. Even these first message
• 8:54
  mentions that you're talking about, I never heard of that
• 8:57
  either. So it was sometime in my 50s
• 8:59
  that I realized people were celebrating Kermit the Frog's
• 9:03
  birthday. On my birthday, sure.
• 9:05
  Anyway, I know, I know, I seem like a poor sport about it, but
• 9:09
  no. Everyone deserves to have their
• 9:11
  birthday be there. Even an old person like me
• 9:13
  deserves to have a birthday. That's exactly it.
• 9:16
  No, I don't blame you one bit. But I also think a big part of
• 9:19
  it is the Internet, like the Internet becoming a thing around
• 9:22
  that same time where everyone not only can learn the
• 9:25
  information very easily, but then you have people to
• 9:27
  celebrate with. I don't know if like before 2005
• 9:31
  or whatever it was, people would have necessarily been like, OK,
• 9:33
  it's Kermit's birthday. We're all going to get together
• 9:35
  and we're all going to have cake in real life.
• 9:38
  But now it's like like a share of meme, and then we're
• 9:40
  retweeting the meme and then it goes viral.
• 9:42
  And now everyone's like about May 9th, it's Kermit's birthday,
• 9:44
  and then it's gone from you. Yeah, and the Internet is so
• 9:48
  certain as well. So of course I tried Googling
• 9:51
  that just to see. And I was like, what is Kermit's
• 9:53
  birthday? And it's like 100% certain that
• 9:56
  it's May 9th, 1955. OK.
• 9:59
  And then but then it's interesting because those other
• 10:01
  questions that they OfferUp for you to click on are like, is
• 10:06
  Kermit alive? And I was like, let me click
• 10:08
  that one. It's like Kermit is not alive.
• 10:10
  He's a fictional character. It's like I what about could was
• 10:15
  Kermit born? Well, I don't know that answer,
• 10:17
  but you know, they they do offer you some very strange questions.
• 10:21
  Is Kermit a boy or a girl like? We're getting like
• 10:26
  philosophical. It is philosophical now, yeah.
• 10:28
  It's just strange the questions that they offer you to to, to,
• 10:32
  you know, to explore on the Internet.
• 10:33
  But they are. The Internet is 100% sure that
• 10:37
  that May 9th, 1955 is his birthday.
• 10:40
  Well, and some people know that in the Sesame Street Unpaved
• 10:43
  book, which I think came out for the 35th anniversary of Sesame
• 10:45
  Street, the writer made-up the idea that Kermit's birthday is
• 10:49
  on Leap Day on on February 29th. So I mean, that's just as valid,
• 10:53
  like it's just a made-up day. Yes, I saw online also a picture
• 10:58
  of Kermit celebrating his birthday with the Rockettes on a
• 11:02
  November date. And then I also was told that
• 11:07
  with the, you know, prior to Disney, we used to sometimes say
• 11:11
  his birthday was September 24th, which is my father's birthday.
• 11:15
  So, but more, more to the point, do fictional characters have to
• 11:19
  have birthdays? Well.
• 11:20
  I don't think they have to have birthdays.
• 11:22
  I think it's just like it's nice for you to have a birthday and
• 11:25
  for me to have a birthday. It's nice for everyone to have a
• 11:27
  little day of celebration, I think.
• 11:31
  But I mean, more so, you know, I, I can going back to these
• 11:33
  calendars, which I mean, whatever we could debate back
• 11:36
  and forth whether or not they're Canon or not.
• 11:38
  But specifically the Sesame Street calendars for me growing
• 11:41
  up always had character birthdays on there.
• 11:44
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 11:45
  So I don't know what the purpose was.
• 11:47
  Was it just to remind us kids that, like, Ernie's out there
• 11:50
  and he has a birthday, or are we supposed to do something on that
• 11:53
  day? We supposed to somehow celebrate
• 11:55
  today's Slimy's birthday. Celebrate however Slimy would
• 11:59
  celebrate his birthday. Interesting question.
• 12:03
  So if you were me, would you just give your birthday to
• 12:07
  Kermit? You know, that's a tough
• 12:10
  question because like I said it, it is nice.
• 12:13
  Again, speaking as someone who shares a birthday with a
• 12:16
  holiday, wait, what is your? Who, who, who?
• 12:19
  Who is your birthday? I'm I my birthday is New Year's.
• 12:22
  Day. No.
• 12:23
  OK, No. It's how OK.
• 12:24
  It's it's New Year's Day, which is it's sometimes nice because
• 12:27
  people stay up late the night before and there's fireworks.
• 12:31
  But then the next day it's like, I don't know, everyone's
• 12:33
  celebrating something else or they or they're staying home.
• 12:36
  Nobody wants to go out. It's something that I I feel
• 12:40
  you've carried that burden your whole life, whereas I've only
• 12:42
  carried this burden for a few years.
• 12:46
  Yes, this has been my birthday for my whole life so far.
• 12:49
  But but at the same time, you know, I think it is nice to know
• 12:53
  that your birthday is being celebrated by something that's
• 12:55
  that's larger than you. Like, I do appreciate the fact
• 12:58
  sometimes that my birthday is January 1st because it's easy to
• 13:02
  remember it's the first day of the year, you know?
• 13:04
  For you, it's like people might remember because they already
• 13:06
  know that May 9th is supposedly Kermit's birthday.
• 13:10
  Yeah, I can tell from how entrenched it is on the Internet
• 13:14
  and I'm going to have to either give Kermit this birthday and I
• 13:19
  won't celebrate on that day anymore, or we are going to have
• 13:22
  to share it. That's very hard to deal with.
• 13:25
  I do want people to know that my parents are not, we're not the
• 13:30
  kind of people that would have me celebrate my birthday with
• 13:34
  Kermit, that that never would have happened.
• 13:36
  That's at least let's at least let's know that.
• 13:39
  Let's at least know that yes, you are.
• 13:41
  Not the Bergen family, no. Right.
• 13:44
  Well, so that does beg the question, if we could change
• 13:51
  Kermit's birthday to something we're like, if if we were going
• 13:55
  to tell, you know, like the Disney company and the Henson
• 13:58
  company, we're going to come together and say, OK, we're
• 13:59
  going to agree on like what Kermit's canonical birthday
• 14:02
  would be. What will we what would we
• 14:04
  change it to? And this may be a question more
• 14:09
  for someone who's like really into astrology to know.
• 14:12
  I don't know anything about astrology, but if someone was
• 14:14
  going to say like, oh, well, he's, he really has the
• 14:16
  characteristics of a Leo, It's like, oh, that kind of narrows
• 14:19
  it down a little bit. Well.
• 14:20
  Apparently on one of the Muppet appearances, they said he was a
• 14:24
  Taurus, but that was only to say that he was a bull and would
• 14:29
  therefore be a bullfrog. So it was only a joke.
• 14:32
  But and but May 9th this is a Taurus, a Taurus sign.
• 14:37
  I don't really know. I mean, I have to admit, I think
• 14:39
  it's, I think the, the, you know, I think the train has left
• 14:44
  the station on this. Probably you might be.
• 14:46
  Right. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:48
  And maybe you could also say at my age, like, I don't really
• 14:51
  need to ever have a birthday again.
• 14:53
  Like I think I just kind of like wave the white flag and say I'm
• 14:58
  done. Well, I mean, that could be a
• 15:00
  loophole too. If you do get to the point where
• 15:02
  you say, like, look, I really don't want to celebrate my
• 15:04
  birthday anymore. So you know what?
• 15:05
  When people come over and they think they're celebrating my
• 15:07
  birthday, we're just going to say it's Kermit's birthday and
• 15:09
  we'll have a green cake. You're making me feel.
• 15:11
  Better about it now. I think that yeah, this is a
• 15:13
  good approach. It's like I have to see the
• 15:15
  silver lining, like and, and I, you know, I'm not around
• 15:19
  forever. Kermit is around forever.
• 15:21
  So he will he will take over the birthday forever and I'll just
• 15:25
  give it up early. You and Candice Bergen can get
• 15:29
  together and you can watch everyone else celebrate on May
• 15:32
  9th. So well, I also wanted to ask,
• 15:37
  you know, we, we talked a little bit about, you know, what your
• 15:39
  parents didn't do on your birthdays, which as you said,
• 15:41
  was not celebrate Kermit's birthday.
• 15:43
  How did you celebrate birthdays when you were young?
• 15:46
  You know, we didn't have a lot of big birthday parties.
• 15:50
  First of all, I, I think kids birthday parties were so
• 15:53
  different in those days than they are today.
• 15:56
  You know, there was no arms race of, you know, who's got a bigger
• 16:00
  birthday party going. You know, we didn't have bouncy
• 16:03
  houses or pony rides or any candy.
• 16:06
  Bergen had pony rides. I read about that.
• 16:08
  She had a class. She had a very, very classic
• 16:11
  Beverly Hills childhood that was really magical to read about.
• 16:15
  I loved it. I loved reading about her
• 16:18
  childhood. But no, we were just kind of, we
• 16:21
  had like a normal suburban scene with really small birthday
• 16:25
  parties and, and, and when we were Young Living in Greenwich,
• 16:29
  CT, we didn't even socialize that much with other kids.
• 16:33
  We, we were with each other a lot.
• 16:35
  So we had five kids and that sort of made a party in itself,
• 16:41
  you know, when we were younger, as we got older like we did, we
• 16:44
  did some birthday things. It wasn't a it wasn't too, too
• 16:47
  much of a big part of our lives. Christmas was very, very big in
• 16:51
  our house, you know, and that was a big opportunity to get the
• 16:56
  giant Christmas tree that my father would cut down in the
• 17:00
  woods and, and they would, they would, we would drive up to a
• 17:03
  big Christmas tree farm. He would cut the tree down, the
• 17:05
  biggest one that could possibly fit on the top of the station
• 17:08
  wagon. And then, you know, it was, it
• 17:12
  was decorated with every ornament you could possibly find
• 17:14
  because it was, the trees were so big and we made a lot of
• 17:19
  Christmas ornaments. We, you know, it was, it was a,
• 17:23
  it was a very, that was a very, very big festive time for us.
• 17:26
  We also celebrated Easter, very lot of handmade decorated eggs.
• 17:31
  I think birthday is a bit less. Yeah, And you know, we we're,
• 17:34
  we're, we think a lot about your dad as being such a, a brilliant
• 17:38
  creative mind. But your mom was, is, was such
• 17:40
  an artist as well. And so I assume that a lot of
• 17:43
  that stuff, especially Christmas and Easter, you know, being at
• 17:46
  home with her and with all your siblings, I bet she was a big
• 17:49
  part of that. She.
• 17:50
  Really was Easter was her holiday, Christmas was my dad's.
• 17:55
  He, he was a big, he, he really loved the, the buying of the
• 18:00
  presents and getting the right balance of like something big
• 18:05
  and fabulous, but something tiny and perfect and beautiful and
• 18:09
  beautiful decorations, you know, making ornaments of all kinds,
• 18:13
  you know, whether they were beaded ornaments or we made
• 18:16
  those, those baked ones where you create like a sort of a what
• 18:21
  looks like bread dough, create ornaments and you cook them and
• 18:25
  they become hard. It's really, they look beautiful
• 18:28
  on the tree. They look like cookies, but they
• 18:31
  last forever. So he was very Christmassy.
• 18:36
  My mother was very Easter and you know, we made, we did
• 18:40
  decorated eggs and had a big collection of Easter decorations
• 18:45
  and, you know, beautiful little baby animal, little stuffed,
• 18:52
  whether it's stuffed animals or China animals, candy animals,
• 18:57
  They were both fabulous holidays for us.
• 19:00
  I love. This little peek inside the the
• 19:02
  Henson house, it's a nice, nice treat.
• 19:06
  So I have a few questions for you that are actually not
• 19:08
  related to birthdays, just because it.
• 19:10
  It's been a few years since we've spoken.
• 19:13
  It was such a treat to see you on my television the day of the
• 19:17
  Academy Awards when Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio won for
• 19:21
  best Animated Feature. And there you were.
• 19:23
  You were on stage. Yeah, it was.
• 19:24
  The best it was the best it was actually so such a literally a
• 19:31
  dream come true. And you, you know, you don't
• 19:36
  dare to dream that you really will get to go up on stage at
• 19:39
  the Oscars. But when it happened, you know,
• 19:42
  it had that surreal feeling like, oh, my God, it's really,
• 19:45
  really happening now. It's so special.
• 19:49
  We actually had a wonderful time with Pinocchio in the award
• 19:53
  season because Guillermo made such a special film that it was
• 19:57
  it won every award. And so it was like a romp
• 20:02
  through the award season. A victory lap and a romp that
• 20:06
  everybody had fun. And you know, there were some
• 20:10
  other good films, but we at a certain point we knew he was
• 20:14
  going to win them all. And he was.
• 20:17
  So he's such a delightful, incredible person to spend time
• 20:23
  with. It was it was a very special
• 20:24
  time for us. I'm so glad to hear that.
• 20:27
  He seems like a nice guy and the film was amazing.
• 20:29
  I truly, truly loved it 15. 15 years in the making for us.
• 20:35
  Wow, yeah, I mean, and that's got to be nice too, for
• 20:38
  something like that to pay off. So many movie projects are like
• 20:43
  that. They just take forever.
• 20:45
  And sometimes we feel like fools like why are we, Oh my God, we
• 20:50
  have to find a new financier for this.
• 20:52
  It will be the 4th 1. You know, it happens on a lot of
• 20:55
  projects and sometimes you think, oh, am I just, am I just
• 20:59
  being a, am I just being naive thinking this is ever going to
• 21:02
  happen happened. So when when something does come
• 21:05
  to pass after 15 years and is brilliant and is a classic, it,
• 21:10
  it kind of gives you a bit more faith in the whole, in the whole
• 21:14
  roller coaster of, you know, creative development.
• 21:17
  Yeah, absolutely. So.
• 21:20
  And then Speaking of seeing you on my television screen once
• 21:23
  again, you got a great cameo in an episode of Fraggle Rock.
• 21:29
  Back to the Rock that I just think that's.
• 21:33
  More of an Easter egg than a cameo.
• 21:34
  Okay, fair. I think it's.
• 21:35
  It's like a little a little bit of call me a little Colombie,
• 21:38
  but so you appear in a photograph of Doc shaking hands
• 21:44
  with the Dean of her university and getting her.
• 21:46
  Doctorate. Yeah.
• 21:48
  Right, right. What a joy, first of all, just
• 21:51
  to see you on screen because you know, there's only so many of us
• 21:53
  who you know, who know what Lisa Henson looks like who were
• 21:57
  watching the show. And so that was obviously for
• 21:59
  me, that was just for me to to see and enjoy.
• 22:03
  But can you tell me how that came about for you?
• 22:06
  You know, John Tartaglia is just a, he's just a softy.
• 22:10
  You know, he's, he's a, he's one of, he's one of you guys.
• 22:14
  He's a, he's a fan in addition to being an incredible
• 22:16
  showrunner. So these all these ideas come
• 22:19
  from him. Great.
• 22:21
  That doesn't surprise me one bit.
• 22:23
  And I think a lot of people are curious about the future of the
• 22:29
  Jim Henson Company's offices, which is an interesting thing
• 22:32
  just to be curious about because you know, it's it's just a place
• 22:35
  where people work, not a it's not a public location.
• 22:38
  But could you give us any update about how things are going with
• 22:42
  with a sale the move anything at this we?
• 22:47
  Sold We sold the lot at the end of of 2024 to a wonderful
• 22:54
  partnership of John Mayer and the director Mick G and John
• 22:58
  Mayer, who has been working in the recording studio here for a
• 23:01
  long time. He was he actually kept his
• 23:04
  offices here and spent, you know, he spent a lot of time in
• 23:08
  the recording studio. And so he now as a co-owner of
• 23:13
  the lot is kind of running the recording business.
• 23:16
  And Mick G loves Hollywood history, you know, so he is
• 23:22
  already doing some beautiful work on on the lot, you know,
• 23:26
  restoring the gardening, the landscaping to more the Charlie
• 23:31
  Chaplin aesthetic, which is exciting.
• 23:34
  And we're still here on the lot till, you know, we had we made
• 23:38
  an arrangement to stay for a year so that we could find, you
• 23:41
  know, appropriate office space. But we're not ready to announce
• 23:44
  where we're moving. But we will move.
• 23:45
  We will be moving before the end of the year to another office.
• 23:49
  Hopefully. It will not be officey.
• 23:51
  We're not like officey people. Hopefully it'll be homey and
• 23:55
  creative and a little bit special because you know, we
• 24:01
  don't, we don't fit in an office tower, right?
• 24:03
  You have a reputation to uphold, you know Exactly.
• 24:07
  Being the. Kind of place where like this
• 24:09
  kind of, you know, Hensony Muppity magic happens.
• 24:12
  And I think the thing that a lot of fans by which I mean myself
• 24:16
  are concerned about is a lot of the the things that you have on
• 24:20
  display like Kermit as Charlie Chaplin and, you know some of
• 24:24
  the the artwork that you have the the relics.
• 24:26
  Are you gonna make sure they're homes for all that as well of?
• 24:29
  Course, you know, we, we are so proud of the archives.
• 24:35
  As I said, I was talking about Karen Fock.
• 24:36
  Like, you know, we, we take care of our collection very well, but
• 24:40
  we also have a smaller and smaller collection of artifacts
• 24:44
  and puppets as so many of them have been donated to the
• 24:48
  appropriate museums, which is really where what we wanted to
• 24:51
  see happen. You know, once we, once we
• 24:55
  decided not to do our own museum, which is a decision that
• 24:58
  we made in the mid 90s, we did a full study after my dad passed
• 25:04
  of what would it, what would it look like to, you know,
• 25:09
  actually, we had considered turning the, the offices in New
• 25:11
  York City into, into the museum on 69th St. and it just didn't
• 25:19
  pencil out at all because the building couldn't be made ADA
• 25:23
  compliant. It didn't really have an
• 25:25
  elevator, it didn't had like 3 toilets and anyway, it just
• 25:29
  wasn't going to work. So once we decided not to have
• 25:32
  our own museum, we have worked with Bonnie Erickson and Karen
• 25:40
  and a number of other really skilled people at cataloguing
• 25:45
  and understanding our collection and then carefully giving all
• 25:49
  the pieces, most all the really important historical pieces to
• 25:53
  different museums. So we, we have a few things
• 25:56
  decorating the offices, but it's it's not a big collection
• 26:00
  actually. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:01
  I just wanted to review all of that like you need to know.
• 26:04
  No, of course. Well, look, it's all important
• 26:06
  to us so well, Lisa, thank you so much for being here and for
• 26:09
  joining us for this conversation.
• 26:10
  It's great to just get the record straight about what May
• 26:14
  9th is and what it's not. Well, thank you thank you so
• 26:18
  much for for wishing me a happy birthday and I I, it may be the
• 26:23
  last time I celebrate on May 9th.
• 26:25
  So that was but it's it's good. We'll, we'll mark it.
• 26:28
  We'll mark it on the calendar. Yes, we're going out with a.
• 26:31
  Bang. We're going out with a bang.
• 26:32
  Last birthday. Exactly.
• 26:33
  Well, happy, happy birthday, Lisa and you.
• 26:37
  Happy birthday Salmon Friends. If we're not celebrating
• 26:40
  Kermits, we'll celebrate Salmon Friends and Henson Company.
• 26:42
  Yes, exactly. Thank you.