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The Muppets Mayhem: Backstage Pass - "Eight Days a Week" with Leslie Carrara-Rudolph (Penny) · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to The Muppets Mayhem Backstage.
• 0:09
  Pass, the unofficial companion podcast to The Muppets Mayhem
• 0:12
  presented by Tough bigs.com. This is the podcast where we
• 0:15
  tour through every episode of The Muppets Mayhem to uncover
• 0:18
  behind the scenes, stories, Easter eggs and more.
• 0:20
  With the talented cast and crew who helped put the series
• 0:23
  together. I'm your host, dedicated mayhead
• 0:25
  Joe Hennis. Today we are talking about track
• 0:28
  7-8 days a week in which the band comes together for A Hard
• 0:33
  Day's night to please, please me with The Ballad of John and
• 0:35
  Yoko. I am The Walrus.
• 0:38
  This week we are excited to welcome some very fab guests.
• 0:42
  First up, he's the cocreator and executive producer of The
• 0:44
  Muppets Mayhem. Please welcome Nowhere, Man.
• 0:46
  Jeff York's Back to the podcast. Hey Jeff.
• 0:48
  Thank you very much for having me.
• 0:50
  Glad to be in. Next up, he is another cocreator
• 0:55
  and executive producer as well as the performer who makes
• 0:58
  Doctor T's piano gently weep. Please welcome Bill Beretta back
• 1:01
  to the podcast. Hey, Bill.
• 1:02
  Thank you very much. That's very good.
• 1:07
  Our final guest is the Muppet performer behind Sesame Street's
• 1:10
  Abby Cadabby and The Muppets mayhem, Penny Lane.
• 1:13
  No, sorry. That's Penny Waxman.
• 1:15
  Please welcome Leslie Carrara Rudolph to the podcast.
• 1:17
  Hey, Leslie. Thank you for having me.
• 1:21
  So excited to talk to you about this episode and to talk to you
• 1:23
  about Penny Waxman, the breakout character 2023.
• 1:28
  Wow. Yeah, How about that?
• 1:31
  Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to the role
• 1:34
  of Penny? Oh, I For me, it was love at
• 1:38
  first sight. I I I didn't.
• 1:41
  You know, I got the notice. We'd like you to audition, you
• 1:46
  know, I didn't even know there was.
• 1:48
  Other characters happening, you know, so I had no idea.
• 1:52
  So I was just excited like, oh, this will be excited.
• 1:55
  And then I sent over the art and I was like, Oh my God.
• 1:59
  I mean it was like there was, I just knew this woman.
• 2:04
  I I I knew this woman. I'm every woman.
• 2:08
  It's all in me, you know, I just like when I saw it, I was like,
• 2:12
  oh gosh. And then there was Then they had
• 2:15
  the Tina. Audition for Doctor T's mom.
• 2:19
  So the two female roles. But I was just so laser focused
• 2:24
  on Penny that and then there was no other voice for her.
• 2:28
  I was just like, there's no other voice for me but me.
• 2:32
  And so she's just so like everything about her, the fact
• 2:36
  that she's big and she's strong, and then reading her.
• 2:40
  Line about how like she's passionate about music that
• 2:45
  she's from New York and she followed her dream all the way
• 2:48
  to the to California you know and and and started her
• 2:53
  business. I'm like she's like this is what
• 2:55
  I'm doing so I love I love that they chose a a big strong female
• 3:01
  character that is just unapologetically herself.
• 3:05
  So I just. I just fell in love.
• 3:07
  And then they. Then they sent over the sides
• 3:12
  and the writing is so perfect for her that it was just, I
• 3:18
  don't know, she was just one of those.
• 3:20
  She's like butter, right? Literally like butter.
• 3:24
  Like she's just she just rolls off the tongue.
• 3:28
  The beats are in there. The the the language is so full.
• 3:32
  It's like Shakespeare, you know what I mean?
• 3:35
  I'm just me. Yeah, she was just one of those
• 3:40
  dream characters. Like when you're like everybody
• 3:43
  dreams to have like you know, some sort of villain or
• 3:46
  something like some sort of big strong, you know, meaty
• 3:50
  character like this. And they don't come around too
• 3:53
  often. So it was like a dream come
• 3:55
  true. It's like the ultimate, you
• 3:57
  know, she's not a villain or anything.
• 3:59
  She's she's just amazing. So I yeah, but she's.
• 4:06
  She is in the in the most possible way because she is out
• 4:09
  of love for the man that she loves, you know, So she's not,
• 4:14
  she's not mean. She's angry, you know, Bill
• 4:18
  would say make her meaner like, I'm not mean, I'm not an angry
• 4:22
  clown. I'm just, I'm angry because oh,
• 4:25
  how dare you. And then you go and squeeze me,
• 4:28
  you know? Yeah, she's.
• 4:30
  I think she's hurt more than angry.
• 4:33
  Yeah, she's hurt. Bill.
• 4:37
  You know what's interesting? In the writers room, Bill would
• 4:41
  perform, would read Penny's lines, and he was great.
• 4:46
  And it was really a tough thing because we knew it wasn't going
• 4:49
  to be Bill. And we're just like, who could
• 4:52
  be as good as Bill is? And you are better.
• 4:57
  Well, I knew I could hear her because I always, I always heard
• 5:00
  Leslie in my head. You know, when we were writing,
• 5:02
  I knew that was there. Hopefully that's where we were
• 5:06
  gonna end up. Yeah, I didn't know, you know,
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  cuz we that we had people, you know, auditioning.
• 5:14
  But. Mistaken for Bill?
• 5:15
  A lot. Me.
• 5:17
  Visually, Visually. But it's not both.
• 5:21
  I pick up the phone. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I
• 5:22
  thought it was calling. Bill, was this the voice that
• 5:27
  you heard in your head, Bill, the voice that we ended up with?
• 5:29
  Yeah, I mean, close to it. It wasn't.
• 5:31
  Exactly. But I knew it was in Leslie's
• 5:34
  repertoire. You know I knew there was this
• 5:36
  woman in there and and so in my head I kind of fear it just was
• 5:42
  better when ultimately we heard her do it, you know.
• 5:45
  But I I in my in my little brain I I knew she was there.
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  I wasn't sure because because other people auditioned as well
• 5:51
  and there were some great, you know, auditions.
• 5:54
  But I guess I just always heard this and I was.
• 5:57
  I didn't know if this how this was going to turn out, but.
• 5:59
  It's. It's exactly how it's supposed
• 6:02
  to be. Leslie brings this liveliness to
• 6:06
  Penny. That, and I guess one of the
• 6:08
  things with the auditions we were afraid of was we were
• 6:11
  getting a lot of Roz from Monsters Inc, And it matches the
• 6:18
  image, certainly. But what Leslie brought was just
• 6:21
  like, yeah, she's still alive and she's got this temper and
• 6:24
  this fire in her, and that's very Leslie, you know.
• 6:28
  Gave. Me.
• 6:29
  Those tiny feet. I have to balance myself with.
• 6:33
  These tiny feet I have to remain somewhat limber.
• 6:37
  But there's a lot of energy. She even though she's this very
• 6:40
  big character, there's a lot of energy a lot of people would
• 6:43
  maybe play it down but but her movements and and she is very
• 6:48
  grounded and her movements are solid and grounded but the
• 6:52
  energy from in her is what's alive, you know it's great.
• 6:55
  That was coached a lot though from Bill because he would, you
• 6:59
  know, I get I mean you can fit like 20 Abby's and side of
• 7:03
  Penny, right. You know, like, like, and I'm
• 7:06
  laughing a lot of times I'm laughing in there because I'm
• 7:09
  like in this Volkswagen bus, you know, or well, more of a couch
• 7:14
  I'm inside. Couch.
• 7:15
  Right. And I'm laughing because here I
• 7:19
  am, this little person, and you know this little.
• 7:22
  I'm like her kidney, right? I'm this little blonde kidney
• 7:25
  behind these two giant boobs, and I'm seeing what's up there.
• 7:29
  And Bill would come in and he'd go a little less, less, you
• 7:33
  know, just a little. Make it simple, you know?
• 7:35
  So he was like, I felt like I was in good hands.
• 7:38
  I always told, I told people I was like, Bill was my Burgess
• 7:43
  Meredith and I was Rocky. Come in.
• 7:45
  He didn't give it. A note and stuff like that and
• 7:49
  but I have to say really quickly because this is really
• 7:52
  important, when I was on Muppets Tonight, which was 26 years ago,
• 7:59
  I went into the Muppet Workshop and I got pictures of all the
• 8:03
  female characters and I shared this with Bill.
• 8:06
  And I had a little character book and I I pasted the pictures
• 8:11
  of each character in the book. And I wrote characters for for
• 8:14
  each of them. I wrote a little back story and
• 8:17
  there was this one woman and I got to play with Jerry Nelson.
• 8:20
  It was in the Pierce Brosnan episode and I named her Minnie
• 8:26
  Goldberg, which was like like 20-6 years later maybe that me
• 8:32
  drawing I willed it. And she was this she had.
• 8:35
  She had low rider shades. She was wearing a very too tight
• 8:40
  gold Lemay dress, that was that. She was barrel shaped and I had
• 8:46
  such joy with that and Jerry was playing with me and I was like,
• 8:50
  I love this character. Is that less?
• 8:52
  Is that the same one that did the Billy Crystal scene?
• 8:56
  I'll have what she's having. Yeah.
• 8:59
  Is that the same puppet? Yeah, no, it's a different one I
• 9:03
  had. That's where I heard that too.
• 9:04
  Said that line three times in three different Muppet
• 9:07
  situations. Oh really?
• 9:09
  Yeah, once on Sesame Street. I can't remember what it was.
• 9:12
  I think it was true mud or something.
• 9:15
  It was about the letter O Leslie, can you talk a little
• 9:20
  bit about the challenges of playing such a huge puppet like
• 9:23
  Penny? Oh.
• 9:25
  Yeah, well, I mean, I I was more excited when I.
• 9:30
  When I got it. You you're looking at the
• 9:32
  picture, right. And then I'm just thinking she's
• 9:35
  just going to be a little bigger than Doctor T I'm just thinking
• 9:39
  oh, you know it's a big puppet. I've done cows before.
• 9:41
  I've done other stuff. And Bill goes.
• 9:43
  Hey, Les. How how soon can you get out
• 9:46
  here? There's there's something you
• 9:47
  should know about Penny. I was like, huh, rich?
• 9:52
  I guess I'll come out like. I feel something you should know
• 9:56
  about Penny is that you're going to have to wear a backpack with
• 10:00
  a middle pull up your back and it's going to go into her hump
• 10:03
  and we got to distribute the weight.
• 10:05
  And then I was like, Oh my God, and you're probably going to
• 10:09
  have a chest monitor. But I I was so excited.
• 10:13
  None of it mattered. I was like, this is going to be
• 10:16
  awesome. I I have actually had.
• 10:19
  Experience wearing a backpack with a metal pole when I danced
• 10:23
  at Beach Blanket Babylon because we used to have these giant hats
• 10:27
  on our heads and we actually had a harness with like an actual
• 10:31
  garbage can on her head and done the can can.
• 10:33
  So like that was the problem. The fact that I was wearing Bill
• 10:37
  Barretta's we're built so differently is very long before
• 10:42
  so. So it was like it was very
• 10:46
  funny. I was.
• 10:47
  So it was kind of quirky. So the first part time before I
• 10:51
  got my own backpack, that was probably this, the hardest part
• 10:54
  cuz it was sitting funny. It wasn't on my hips, it was at
• 10:58
  my knee. And and you couldn't tighten it
• 11:02
  enough probably, I mean, I was. It was just weird and but the
• 11:06
  cool thing is, is that I came in early.
• 11:09
  The Muppet Workshop is so awesome and brilliant.
• 11:12
  Like, I didn't. I was never nervous.
• 11:14
  And Bill was there, you know, she went through some structural
• 11:17
  issues with the mouth because physically, you know, the arm.
• 11:22
  I wasn't, it wasn't actually ever uncomfortable for me to
• 11:26
  have my left arm in there. I was always like, it just sat
• 11:29
  at just the right place, you know?
• 11:31
  So that was fine. She was surprisingly light.
• 11:34
  The car, you know, they made her.
• 11:36
  Hair. So they distributed it and they
• 11:38
  worked so hard as a team. The only thing that was tricky
• 11:43
  was that you know because it was such a time issue that I didn't
• 11:48
  really get to work with Penny on camera till the 1st scene.
• 11:53
  And that was like, Oh my gosh, all my scenes are their first
• 11:59
  are the first, my first time singer on camera.
• 12:01
  And I just was like, well, I'm just going to do the best I can
• 12:05
  and. See what happens.
• 12:06
  And Bill knows this because Bill is my teacher, is that you're
• 12:11
  figuring out the angles of the character and what looks I I I
• 12:16
  started discovering different things like you know what looked
• 12:19
  what looks good, what her angles were.
• 12:23
  You know I had a right hand which was more enthusiastic than
• 12:27
  my movement. So Bill would say match Leslie's
• 12:29
  movements make it smaller. I also.
• 12:34
  Found out that I think it was the episode where they were
• 12:37
  having the tie dye party and she comes in with the hot pepper.
• 12:40
  I found that if I tilted her back a little and I did
• 12:43
  something with my things, she smiled.
• 12:45
  She has a slip and it actually looks like she's squinting.
• 12:49
  Even though I'm always squinting, I'm always squinting.
• 12:53
  You know, just to mention less like the the thing that in the
• 12:57
  very just in the beginning like the first, I don't know,
• 12:59
  whatever, a couple weeks maybe. I would come in and just talk
• 13:03
  about simplifying things, because what I and I wish I
• 13:08
  could remember who told me. But when I was doing Bobo, I at
• 13:13
  first would move him the same with the same energy and and
• 13:18
  same well same energy as I would with any hand puppet, a smaller
• 13:23
  one. And it it always felt, didn't
• 13:26
  feel real to me. It felt false to me that Bobo
• 13:29
  could be that. Like it, you know it became a
• 13:31
  puppet because it was so light and flimsy.
• 13:34
  And so I that's what I was just trying to get through with
• 13:38
  Leslie was just be careful that you don't put all of that Abby
• 13:42
  Cadabby energy. You know the movement, right?
• 13:46
  Not the character, but obvious. But the movement and and the
• 13:49
  manipulation doesn't lighten the character and make it feel like
• 13:53
  it's just a floppy kind of puppet.
• 13:54
  And she did. She found the balance of.
• 13:57
  The energy, but giving her weight as if she's really
• 14:00
  standing there, you know? He would always come over and
• 14:03
  say give her weight. And I also, when I first started
• 14:07
  on Muppets Tonight, I was I'd only had a four hour monitor
• 14:12
  class with Bill. I was thrown.
• 14:15
  It's like, Oh yeah. And it was I was I People heard
• 14:19
  me say my first day they gave me Karen Pearl's boots.
• 14:23
  Blue Zealand and told me to stand next to Animal which was
• 14:26
  Frank Oz and I was like this is going to be I'm like, I'm going
• 14:31
  to be fired. I'm going to be I mean but Bill
• 14:34
  would say Bill was like and everybody was busy like they
• 14:37
  didn't have time to but he would always come in and he'd he'd
• 14:42
  say, you know I'd work on something every day.
• 14:45
  And I really he goes watch people you know I was always on
• 14:49
  set. He goes.
• 14:50
  Watch the way people perform and see what you like.
• 14:53
  See what works for you. And one of the things I really
• 14:56
  love, one of my favorite characters is Johnny Fiam,
• 15:00
  right? Because Johnny is he's still and
• 15:04
  he's got that energy was coming in.
• 15:06
  It was like, Bill says. Like I really wanted Penny to be
• 15:10
  real. I didn't want her to be a
• 15:11
  punchline or an angry clown or anything.
• 15:15
  I just wanted her to be real and and and.
• 15:20
  And, you know, I know that, like I said, I know this woman so
• 15:23
  well and I wanted to honor that the woman.
• 15:28
  So it it was, it was really a wonderful discovery.
• 15:31
  And I wasn't, you know, when you don't have time to be scared
• 15:35
  because it's like I just didn't have time.
• 15:37
  It was like you. This is your day.
• 15:41
  And I remember that first day. Bill, we did everything.
• 15:44
  Not only, not only you're in this puppet for the first time.
• 15:47
  Oh, by the way, we need you to swing around, make eye contact,
• 15:51
  right. I was like, I don't even know
• 15:53
  how do I find eye. Make eye contact.
• 15:56
  There's two grips. Turning the chair with you do
• 15:59
  this, we're going to throw your leg up.
• 16:02
  And yet B you have somebody working with you doing the hand
• 16:05
  inside of the thing, but not. I mean, it was crazy.
• 16:08
  And then, then the couch. Then you're in a couch.
• 16:11
  Your arms like long and I was just like Oh my God.
• 16:15
  When the and I was just like I want people to make their day.
• 16:19
  I was like I'm going to stay in Penny don't Take Me Out of
• 16:21
  Penny. I don't want to because.
• 16:23
  I was like because. You're on a schedule and every
• 16:26
  day that every hour that you go over, it goes into the next day.
• 16:30
  And I was like, I'm the new kid, I'm going to stay in Penny and
• 16:33
  I'm just going to do this. But after that last scene, I
• 16:37
  fell out of the couch and crawled out and.
• 16:40
  So I'm done. I'm like.
• 16:45
  Yeah, you did it. Let's jump into the episode.
• 16:48
  There's so much more to talk about.
• 16:50
  We'd go on for an hour. Just about Penny's feet.
• 16:53
  Well, can. I say one thing about that, my
• 16:56
  favorite thing when I was watching it, and she flips.
• 16:59
  She flips her leg up. The sound that that makes no
• 17:06
  bill. The sound effects guys were
• 17:08
  having glass. I was like, I'll try this, let's
• 17:11
  try throwing a frozen ham on a desk.
• 17:16
  Can you find the sound of her limb hitting a desk?
• 17:19
  The thud. I'm just gonna have a quick
• 17:22
  background for this episode. Because a lot of cynics out
• 17:26
  there were just like, well, this is obvious corporate synergy.
• 17:29
  This was foisted upon them to tie in with the Disney Plus
• 17:33
  movie get back and it was not at all.
• 17:36
  We were in the writers room and I think our mini, no, our
• 17:40
  writers room, I think at that point and and it was
• 17:45
  Thanksgiving weekend to 21. And of course, that's what,
• 17:49
  Thanksgiving weekend, it premiered on Disney Plus get
• 17:51
  back to the Peter Jackson Beatles documentary.
• 17:53
  And I watched it all, you know, 12 hours of it.
• 17:56
  And I came in on Monday after the vacation.
• 17:59
  I'm like, we have to do this. Like, I don't know if it's a
• 18:02
  scene. It could be just a cold open and
• 18:04
  you just have like Peter Jackson just walk out of a room and just
• 18:07
  be like, I can't, you know, I just can't or I don't.
• 18:11
  Maybe it's a whole episode. I don't know.
• 18:13
  And then we just, I think just all just started talking about
• 18:16
  it. And it became a whole episode,
• 18:18
  which is almost a bottle episode, but but we had to ask
• 18:24
  for permission to do this episode from Disney Plus.
• 18:27
  That was the interesting part. Whereas you couldn't.
• 18:31
  Like if we were in another studio parodying it, you could
• 18:34
  do that, but because this is like part of the family, we had
• 18:38
  to get permission. So I believe Adam went and had
• 18:41
  to speak to representatives from Apple Core, The Beatles Company
• 18:45
  and Wing Nut Films. Peter Jackson's production
• 18:48
  company and present our idea to them and they were all on board.
• 18:53
  And that's what we heard back from one of people, Wingnut,
• 18:57
  saying that Peter Jackson thinks it's a great idea.
• 19:00
  And if you want his involvement in any way, just let him know.
• 19:04
  And that's when we all just sort of looked at each other.
• 19:05
  We're like, but can. We and then and figure and then
• 19:12
  we. We still had to figure out when
• 19:13
  it was going to be in the schedule episode.
• 19:16
  Yeah, where I was going to be in the.
• 19:18
  Where it was going to land, right?
• 19:20
  You know, it wasn't just like, well, let's do a documentary
• 19:22
  style episode at episode 4. You know, it had to work with
• 19:27
  our timeline. Still had to follow the arc of
• 19:30
  these characters and so certainly we're going to build
• 19:32
  this around where those characters are at.
• 19:35
  The other interesting thing about it is when we were in
• 19:38
  production, I think another director was supposed to do it,
• 19:41
  but the director of our first block block was Matt Sohn.
• 19:46
  Who came up as a DP and he did stuff like Survivor, but he also
• 19:51
  was the DP of the office. He was the DP of the office for
• 19:55
  several years. This was almost a homecoming
• 19:57
  because he was at the studio where they made it.
• 19:59
  But it became clear that he would be the perfect person for
• 20:04
  this. And he was absolutely.
• 20:06
  I think we shot this. This was the fastest turnaround
• 20:09
  of any episode. Because he knew what he was
• 20:12
  doing. He's been here before.
• 20:13
  But also instead of being like, okay now, we're gonna reframe it
• 20:16
  for Teeth's close up or for this wide shot.
• 20:19
  You could do that all in a single take as the camera whips
• 20:23
  over and crash zooms in, you know?
• 20:25
  And he knew that language. And you know.
• 20:28
  Could be and he also, which is. It's easier with humans because.
• 20:33
  It's more forgiving to whip a pan right to a human puppets.
• 20:36
  You have to be careful of what you're seeing below.
• 20:38
  Well, he was a director on our last series, the 2015 series, so
• 20:43
  he was already familiar with and same with our other crew, you
• 20:47
  know, or other camera operators. So it was, yeah, it just worked
• 20:53
  out really well. Can I just say one thing?
• 20:56
  What I love about the series, and because Jeff brought it up,
• 20:59
  is that it was. So dedicated in the writing to
• 21:03
  the emotional arc like like he said, he's like we, yeah, we're
• 21:07
  excited, we want to do this. But if it's not going to work,
• 21:11
  you know, like the characters always came first, which is so
• 21:16
  lovely. You know the way that it and
• 21:19
  where are they in the evolution. It has to fit.
• 21:21
  So I love that you fought for that.
• 21:23
  I think that's really. Well, that was the luxury of how
• 21:26
  we got to write ahead, which was that we and it wasn't a fight
• 21:29
  because you have partners who are just like, yes, absolutely,
• 21:32
  that's what we have to do. Yeah, and knowing that you can
• 21:35
  do 10 episodes ahead of time. You're writing the themes and
• 21:39
  the stories and the arcs of the entire season as well as each
• 21:43
  episode, so it was fun to okay. Where is this gonna work best?
• 21:47
  I mean, I know that when this show was originally announced, a
• 21:50
  lot of fans, myself included, thought, oh, it's just going to
• 21:53
  be a parody of Get Back. Like the whole thing is just
• 21:55
  gonna be because we we knew from the get go it was going to be
• 21:57
  about the bands making their first album, which is, I know,
• 22:00
  Get Yeah, Spinal Tap as well, yeah.
• 22:03
  Which we do get a little bit of it in this episode.
• 22:06
  And I'm grateful that you didn't go that way because I think what
• 22:10
  you ended up with was narratively much more
• 22:12
  interesting. But it would have been really
• 22:14
  cool to see. Literally just.
• 22:16
  You know five or six hours of the band in the studio spoofing
• 22:20
  get back. It would have been like plot
• 22:23
  list just to have. Yes, yes, I think plot is
• 22:29
  better. I'm not saying this was a better
• 22:31
  idea, but I think a lot of us were were just assuming like,
• 22:34
  you know, because we didn't know the Mayhem were going to be able
• 22:38
  to carry a plot as well as they did.
• 22:41
  So to be flies on the wall while they're just working and doing
• 22:44
  silly stuff could have worked, and I'm really grateful that you
• 22:47
  did it for one episode. It is such a good spoof and and
• 22:52
  I'm sure in addition to myself, most people watching this are
• 22:56
  huge Beatles fans, so we're really appreciating those
• 22:58
  Beatles references as well. CSO Nora has invited a
• 23:02
  documentary crew to capture the Mayhem's writing and recording
• 23:05
  methods. And Suit immediately wonders
• 23:08
  who's gonna play him in this documentary.
• 23:11
  And that's gonna be a joke that takes us through this whole
• 23:13
  episode. It's hysterical, JJ Nora brings
• 23:17
  JJ into the fold as well, and there's this great shot where he
• 23:20
  walks in an animal, immediately throws A bongo drum at his head
• 23:25
  and like it. That looks like it comes real
• 23:26
  close to him. It was, yeah.
• 23:28
  Yeah, He did it. He died.
• 23:30
  Just in time. Good.
• 23:33
  Or else you'd have to explain why JJ has a black eye for the
• 23:36
  rest of the series. And that's the thing too.
• 23:38
  This is when we first start to. So the idea that JJ and Nora are
• 23:45
  kind of coming together a little bit again, that they're spending
• 23:48
  time together, yeah, this was after Joshua Tree.
• 23:51
  Right. Yes, exactly.
• 23:52
  Yeah. And then we meet our director of
• 23:54
  this documentary. It's Kevin Smith.
• 23:57
  Which is a great cameo. One of those people again who
• 24:01
  I'm surprised hadn't crossed paths with The Muppets earlier.
• 24:04
  He has such a great sense of humor about himself and and
• 24:08
  sense of humility because immediately you're making fun of
• 24:10
  the fact that, like, he's made all these Clerks movies.
• 24:13
  Doctor Teeth calls out Yoga Hosers is like one of his lesser
• 24:16
  films, and he even says about himself that he makes critically
• 24:20
  panned R rated movies. But he's ready to get into
• 24:23
  family entertainments, which is why he's here.
• 24:27
  He seemed to be having a good time.
• 24:29
  Was it fun to work with him? He had a great time.
• 24:32
  He really was happy to be there. He was just having fun.
• 24:35
  He was just just hanging, loved hanging and having fun, you
• 24:37
  know? It was great.
• 24:38
  Conceptually, he also feels like a contemporary of the band, like
• 24:42
  it just seems obvious that he would know them.
• 24:45
  They would run in the same circle, so it just lent itself
• 24:48
  so perfectly. Yeah.
• 24:52
  And then you get this great moment, which made it into all
• 24:54
  the trailers, where he tells the bands that the cameras will be
• 24:58
  filming but do not look into the camera.
• 25:00
  He calls action. And immediately they all look
• 25:02
  straight down the barrel of the camera, motionless.
• 25:05
  And the first draft. I tried to hide as many Beatles
• 25:07
  songs into the dialogue as possible.
• 25:10
  This is, you know, the process is a long one where it's
• 25:13
  rewritten several times, but this I think one is still in
• 25:16
  there, where he chose them to act naturally, which is text.
• 25:19
  It's cover Buck Owens. But yeah, I naturally still in
• 25:24
  there. Nice.
• 25:26
  I missed that one. I was trying to capture all of
• 25:28
  the audiences across the universe have been wondering
• 25:31
  what? That's good.
• 25:34
  Yeah. So this documentary process
• 25:37
  begins. There's text on the screen that
• 25:40
  explains what's going on, just like they didn't get back.
• 25:44
  I appreciate that. It also calls out that a random
• 25:47
  deadline has been forced upon them to create tension and
• 25:49
  stakes, which feels very real, both for what's happening in the
• 25:53
  Mayhem's actual story and for what happened in Get Back when
• 25:58
  they were creating the Let It Be album.
• 26:01
  They have eight days to film it. That's obviously a reference to
• 26:04
  8 days a week. And we see a page of a calendar.
• 26:09
  This is also what they didn't get back.
• 26:11
  You'd see a calendar and they would mark off day by day as
• 26:13
  they went through. And there's some really great
• 26:15
  jokes in this thing. On April 1st, it says tell lips
• 26:19
  he's adopted for April Fool's Day.
• 26:24
  The previous day to to the day that we're on is just labeled
• 26:27
  Yesterday, right? Right before 420 April 20th.
• 26:31
  Yesterday, April 20th, I missed out.
• 26:33
  A lot of people complain, or some people are upset that, you
• 26:35
  know, Kermit didn't make an appearance on the show, but
• 26:37
  Kermit is on this calendar. He's right there.
• 26:40
  And that I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, is a sketch that
• 26:43
  Jim Henson drew himself right that is correct.
• 26:46
  That's amazing, that. I'm saying this now and I'm
• 26:48
  saying it on a podcast, so maybe I'll actually do it.
• 26:50
  It is a tattoo I've considered getting.
• 26:52
  Is that very specific to once in Kermit with his hand up?
• 26:54
  Yep, there are. Oh, it says April 29th is just
• 27:00
  Mom's birthday. Is that actually your mom's
• 27:01
  birthday? It is my mom.
• 27:02
  I made the calendar. So yeah, this is.
• 27:03
  Yeah, yeah. I do assume.
• 27:06
  He wasn't sure why they'd keep that on there, though.
• 27:08
  No. You know what it was, yes, but
• 27:10
  there was also the first zoom in this shot.
• 27:13
  The original of the effects zoomed in but also sort of like
• 27:17
  favored it if you will. Like the camera went right to
• 27:20
  that and you just saw Jeff's mom something and it was a little
• 27:24
  too much. I was like can we redo that and
• 27:26
  just you get a hint of it let let people pause it and see
• 27:29
  whatever. But one of the my greatest joys
• 27:32
  was when this did come out my mom binge the show you know that
• 27:36
  morning and I'm like God did you see episodes.
• 27:39
  I'm like, you should just come, should check out that calendar.
• 27:43
  And she did, and she Facetimed me in tears.
• 27:45
  She was. So moved and so proud and she I
• 27:51
  love it and it was very nice. That's the best kind of perk,
• 27:58
  right? It was very, yeah, to be able to
• 28:00
  do this. Yeah, that's my dad, was my dad.
• 28:03
  He's like, what's for me in there?
• 28:04
  There's nothing. So.
• 28:08
  Sorry, Dad. You can come up with something.
• 28:11
  You'll think of something, yeah? Yeah.
• 28:13
  Season 2 was all about your dad there.
• 28:19
  Right. There's a a music.
• 28:22
  There's like a little musical note thing at the bottom of the
• 28:25
  calendar as well. I I don't read music, so I
• 28:28
  don't. Neither do I.
• 28:29
  So I don't know if I got it right, but I did copy from
• 28:31
  somewhere. I think it's possibly the
• 28:34
  Rainbow connection E ask part somewhere in there.
• 28:38
  Ah okay, but possibly not. All right, someone out there who
• 28:41
  knows more about music, let us know if that's if that's
• 28:43
  accurate or what part of the song it is, because that's
• 28:46
  that's a nice little Easter egg. We got a shot of Janice turning
• 28:50
  an amp up to 11.5 that was seen in the trailer.
• 28:54
  Obviously a Spinal Tap reference.
• 28:57
  I appreciate that. It doesn't just go to 11, it
• 28:59
  doesn't go to 12. It's just a smidge past 11.
• 29:03
  I'll tell you another interesting thing about this
• 29:05
  episode with a lot of not trouble, but it was a lot of
• 29:09
  work to edit this episode. And what was very cool about it
• 29:12
  was a lot of these scenes were modular and we can move things
• 29:16
  around. And one of the coolest things
• 29:17
  that we shot were just all these little bits and pieces and whip
• 29:22
  pans. So we could give it that
• 29:24
  documentary feel, but also place them wherever we needed to just
• 29:28
  to get to the next thing, whatever it was going to be.
• 29:30
  And again, we move things around.
• 29:32
  We wound up color coding these scenes, writing them down, and
• 29:35
  just, you know, we have this scene which is red here and
• 29:39
  going to remove this one later so that red carries over.
• 29:42
  But you could always cut to these really fun little B roll
• 29:45
  things. Yeah.
• 29:48
  And this sequence especially has like just a series of boom,
• 29:51
  boom, boom, boom, boom. You know one of them is we see
• 29:54
  Floyd's Mr. Base Man sticker on his base.
• 29:58
  That was the that was the other one.
• 29:59
  That was when I watched it that weekend get back.
• 30:02
  I was like, it's just right there.
• 30:05
  It's so good because obviously Paul has a Baseman sticker.
• 30:09
  And then, yes, his Muppet fans would know there's famously Mr.
• 30:13
  Baseman. Writes the The Floyd Song from
• 30:16
  the Old Days in Muppet Show. Bill, do you remember how many
• 30:19
  calls we were on where I was? Just like, don't forget he needs
• 30:22
  the sticker. No, I mean, I don't remember how
• 30:25
  many exactly, but I remember, yeah, that that we had to make
• 30:28
  sure it was there for sure. Yeah.
• 30:31
  I'm so glad you did. I saw it.
• 30:33
  I loved it. Moog is pouring a cup of tea for
• 30:37
  Zoot, and you had mentioned in a previous episode that the cups
• 30:40
  are the same ones used or seen and get back.
• 30:43
  Bethany Barton. So.
• 30:45
  Beth took it upon herself. Really.
• 30:47
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:50
  You have to make the cups the same.
• 30:52
  It was it was just the greatest gift.
• 30:54
  Bill, you mentioned it before, but it's just like when people
• 30:56
  saw how much we cared about this and all the details we want to
• 30:59
  put in it, just they just went with it, you know?
• 31:02
  And just absolutely, Bethany especially just loves it and
• 31:06
  works her butt off to just put in all these details because
• 31:09
  she's a geek too, you know. She loves all this stuff.
• 31:12
  And I just remember the day she just came up to me so excited,
• 31:16
  you know, and just said these are the mugs, these are the
• 31:19
  mugs. And I'm like, I didn't even know
• 31:20
  I was like, yeah. Fantastic.
• 31:22
  We would have these meetings, we would go into their trailer.
• 31:26
  And she had everything laid out Donuts and yeah, it was like
• 31:29
  here's what's what do you think? And are these working and and
• 31:33
  just the research that she would do and just go take it upon
• 31:36
  herself to make, you know, how do I elevate all of this, you
• 31:40
  know, in my own little way and and and it does in such a big
• 31:43
  way. You know, so right.
• 31:45
  Zoot is brainstorming ideas of other people who can play him in
• 31:49
  the movie he in this moment, he suggests Elvis.
• 31:54
  And is shocked to learn that Elvis is dead.
• 31:56
  What? I love that.
• 31:58
  Just two words. It's so good.
• 32:02
  And later on in the episode, same thing with James Brown.
• 32:05
  Frank Sinatra. He's just completely out of the
• 32:09
  loop. This poor guy pick up a
• 32:10
  newspaper suit. Doctor Teeth and Floyd are
• 32:14
  jamming together and Penny is there and she is knitting next
• 32:19
  to Doctor Teeth. And she says you won't even know
• 32:22
  I'm here. And she starts clearing her
• 32:23
  throat and she's making some awful noises.
• 32:27
  Leslie, you look like you're having a good time remembering
• 32:30
  this it. Was so funny.
• 32:33
  The other thing like I'm you have to know I'm inside Penny,
• 32:37
  so I'm laughing in there cuz no one can see me.
• 32:40
  I feel like invincible in there. But the thing that makes me
• 32:44
  laugh, I was like, you know, like Bill.
• 32:48
  Bill is such an enabler. You know, I was making this one
• 32:52
  noise, Bill. You know, Kevin makes it when he
• 32:55
  scratches his throat. It's like it's a weird noise.
• 33:03
  It's such a weird noise. And I did it because Kevin used
• 33:05
  to make these noises. Really annoying.
• 33:08
  But what makes me laugh because I just watched that scene.
• 33:11
  I played it back. I go that one noise sounds like
• 33:15
  gas. It's very.
• 33:16
  Good. It doesn't sound like it's
• 33:19
  coming out of her mouth and Oh no, she changes.
• 33:24
  Yeah, I. Was like gas and it just makes
• 33:27
  me laugh so hard. I'm so immature but it just
• 33:29
  made. Me but I just I just and too
• 33:32
  like from from where my perspective with teeth he just
• 33:36
  loves her so much like he those sounds is it's like you know I
• 33:41
  don't know it's like bird calls to him you know.
• 33:44
  Like listening to a pug. Snoring.
• 33:47
  Isn't that cute? Listen to my potbelly pig.
• 33:51
  Isn't she wonderful? Yeah.
• 33:53
  This is I do. I do want to praise you for
• 33:55
  this. Relate this part of the
• 33:57
  relationship that they're in, Doctor Teeth and Penny, because
• 34:01
  I think a a lesser show would have had them doing the current
• 34:05
  Miss Piggy thing. One of them is a crush, the
• 34:06
  other one doesn't want it going back and forth, whatever.
• 34:10
  Yeah, yeah. Like almost immediately, like,
• 34:12
  you're just like just a few episodes in.
• 34:14
  They're like, we're doing this and they're just in this
• 34:17
  relationship. That's weird.
• 34:18
  But like oddly healthy. You know, like they're actually
• 34:22
  into a lot of the same things and they're very supportive of
• 34:24
  each other. Like, I'm, I'm really into it.
• 34:25
  I I ship them. I just love it.
• 34:29
  It's you. I hate you.
• 34:30
  I hate you. I love.
• 34:31
  It when she says that I hate you.
• 34:36
  But it was just like, Oh my gosh, my pulse went up.
• 34:39
  You know, like my hands was sweating.
• 34:41
  I can't believe I'm feeling this again.
• 34:44
  But yeah, I just. They were rekindled in a moment.
• 34:48
  Yeah, it's pretty funny to me, but yeah, those noises were a
• 34:52
  pleasure to make. I'm so glad.
• 34:55
  And you can, I mean, and we've certainly had fun out.
• 34:58
  You know, there's stuff that doesn't get used in the show,
• 35:01
  but we certainly had fun, you know, improvising while we were
• 35:05
  waiting to shoot and laying around.
• 35:09
  The what? The different noise.
• 35:10
  The different love love names. Love names?
• 35:14
  Yeah. Like like pet names for each
• 35:17
  other. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 35:19
  Any any favorites that stick out to you?
• 35:21
  'Cause I can't think of them now you.
• 35:23
  Know Well, you use the olive, right?
• 35:27
  Yeah, that we use. I love the way she says.
• 35:30
  It's Olive, yeah. I think I had a I think I had a
• 35:34
  mountain reference or something. You know, like like.
• 35:37
  My volcano is, you know, passion or something.
• 35:41
  That's cute. I remember at one point, I don't
• 35:43
  know if it was Dave or Zoot saying I can't stop looking at
• 35:47
  her. It was at the end of the scene,
• 35:51
  he goes. I I can't stop looking at her.
• 35:56
  The fire alarm. Compliment or like a train
• 35:58
  wreck. Why not both?
• 36:02
  In the next scene, Nora and Hannah are catching up in the
• 36:04
  makeup chair and we get another Beatles reference as JJ runs by
• 36:08
  being chased by animal and he shouts help, I need somebody,
• 36:13
  which I also like because he could have just said help and it
• 36:16
  would have been another one of those.
• 36:17
  Like, I don't know if you're paying attention, maybe you'd
• 36:18
  noticed it was a Beatles reference.
• 36:19
  But yeah, yeah, drove it home with I need somebody.
• 36:24
  Floyd and Doctor Teeth are still workshopping new songs.
• 36:27
  Floyd is humming out a song and he's replacing the word with
• 36:30
  like, something, something, something.
• 36:31
  Is that another Beatles reference or is it just the word
• 36:33
  something? Something was?
• 36:35
  Yeah, we had it at a few, but yes.
• 36:38
  Why not? No.
• 36:39
  Was. I mean, I definitely had written
• 36:40
  it in there at a different point, but this something
• 36:43
  something, something sufficing. Gotcha.
• 36:45
  And it goes with that tune. Something.
• 36:47
  Something. Something something, yeah.
• 36:53
  Doctor Teeth is not listening because Penny has knitted him
• 36:56
  into a constricting turtleneck sweater that goes all the way up
• 36:59
  to his nose, which is a great visual, just like his big floppy
• 37:04
  nose hanging out over this huge, potentially uncomfortable,
• 37:08
  probably very warm. He loved it.
• 37:11
  He did seem to love it. Yeah, it's beautifully crafted.
• 37:15
  Everyone else was jealous. Yeah, they were.
• 37:18
  My favorite thing is that you're just jealous that have a sweater
• 37:21
  that turtles my neck. I love that.
• 37:24
  Such an amazing line. Later we see Doctor Chief
• 37:31
  playing the keyboard. An animal is like sitting in the
• 37:33
  background looking bored and kind of dozing off, which seemed
• 37:36
  like another get back Is it? Yeah, Stephen Floyd are playing
• 37:42
  and Penny decides she's going to join in and she just starts
• 37:45
  singing and it's like obviously a Yoko Ono thing.
• 37:50
  It's. So tell me what was what was
• 37:53
  your like your cue Leslie, for trying to recreate the sound
• 37:59
  what what was going through your.
• 38:00
  Well, I watched the documentary, right?
• 38:02
  Like everybody did. And I said, I'm like, do you
• 38:06
  want me to really sound like her?
• 38:09
  Like, do you want me to make that noise?
• 38:12
  I have that happen and they're like, yeah, we want you to.
• 38:15
  Because it's it's assaulting, you know, it's just like do it
• 38:21
  without the neighbors thing, like some sort of someone's
• 38:25
  killing a yak in the apartment next door, you know, with a
• 38:29
  butter knife, you know, so. Again, it's just one of like,
• 38:34
  really I'm imagine I'm inside Penny going like I really get to
• 38:38
  make these noises. You know, it's just like I'm I'm
• 38:42
  like, I guess I just felt so mischievous.
• 38:45
  But it was all so freeing as well.
• 38:50
  You have to imagine too, and I'm going to get a little female on
• 38:53
  you here, but but this was during a time you know where.
• 38:59
  The women lost our, we lost our rights.
• 39:01
  Roe versus Wade was overturned, right.
• 39:03
  So for me, Penny became even more important.
• 39:08
  I'm just going to say because to be I was like, you want to talk
• 39:12
  about my body, I'm going to walk into this.
• 39:15
  You know, I was just like, so it was just very empowering to just
• 39:20
  unleash whatever, you know, like I said unapologetically her.
• 39:26
  Expressing herself loudly with the permission of the you know,
• 39:29
  So it was just kind of like one of those things where But yes, I
• 39:33
  did try to make those noises and it was alarming and I might have
• 39:38
  scared myself. But I think this, I think this
• 39:41
  episode allowed her to become who she believes that she was
• 39:48
  when she knew the band. You know she's been living as
• 39:51
  now this. Owner of this record company and
• 39:54
  she's supposed to be a certain person who's just not happy, you
• 39:58
  know, and and now she's finding some joy and and being playful.
• 40:02
  And so we start to see Penny in a more playful way.
• 40:05
  You know, gives her a place to go, which was nice, you.
• 40:08
  Know we also had a debate whether or not we could continue
• 40:12
  the screaming over the next scene.
• 40:15
  How do you I believe starts wailing and then we go to a
• 40:18
  cutaway scene in the makeup room and makeup chair and we just
• 40:22
  tried to keep. I mean, cuz Leslie gave us, you
• 40:24
  know, minutes upon minutes of screaming, wailing, banshee,
• 40:27
  crying, and. Just one breath.
• 40:30
  I want you to know like the, the when we went to the looping
• 40:34
  scene, whatever, I'm like I just kept.
• 40:37
  Going, yeah, and it Peters out. But we're like, can we keep it?
• 40:40
  Can we keep it going through this whole dialogue and became
• 40:44
  just a little too much so it goes Peter's out.
• 40:48
  It comes back in as we go back to the scene where she is just
• 40:51
  finishing, I believe, right? Right.
• 40:55
  Well, we look forward to Penny's solo well, coming out any day
• 40:59
  now, yeah? Nora asked Lips if he has any of
• 41:04
  The Beatles on speed dial, and he seems to respond in the in
• 41:08
  the affirmative, and he sounds like he's saying love me do as
• 41:12
  he's walking away. I'm not saying he's saying love
• 41:15
  me do. Right, but check the subtitles.
• 41:18
  The close Catch probably tell us.
• 41:20
  Yeah, right. He does that double thing,
• 41:22
  though. Yeah, yeah, right.
• 41:25
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 41:26
  Could be anything. Moog is helping JJ.
• 41:30
  He doesn't know it at first, but he's helping JJ get in with
• 41:34
  Nora. The first thing he does is
• 41:37
  suggest getting bunnies for animal to get on.
• 41:39
  Animals good side. And then soon after.
• 41:42
  Once he realizes that JJ is using him, he tells him to ask
• 41:47
  the band how he got the name, how they got the name Doctor
• 41:49
  Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. And this is great because I
• 41:53
  mean, we've we've talked about this before, but early on in the
• 41:57
  season, the characters talk about how Doctor D's names in
• 42:01
  the title, but he's not really the front man.
• 42:03
  It's a democracy for what? For all intents and purposes,
• 42:07
  and. It seems like Doctor Teeth does
• 42:09
  not want to tell this story, but the rest of the band kind of
• 42:11
  jump in. Floyd explains that the band was
• 42:13
  originally called the Good Times Happy Trails, Super Smiles Fun
• 42:17
  Band. But then they met Penny and when
• 42:21
  Penny saw them for the first time she felt a burning deep in
• 42:24
  her soul and scalp because her haircut caught on fire from the
• 42:28
  the lasers of the laser show. And once the rubble cleared, she
• 42:33
  gave the band a record deal and a new name, Doctor Teeth of the
• 42:36
  Electric Mayhem. And I love this that she's like
• 42:40
  immediately tied into to the band's history.
• 42:43
  It's not just that she was present, like she actually did
• 42:46
  something that we saw throughout the the mayhem's history.
• 42:50
  We just didn't know it until now.
• 42:53
  This was my audition they it it the which was so which is such a
• 42:59
  great. The other thing like the perfect
• 43:01
  character and then the perfect audition side that you see that.
• 43:08
  Not only did she move out to California, you know, but but
• 43:11
  there was a little more to the dialogue, right, Jeff, Rick.
• 43:14
  Because it was like after an evening, you know, she had an
• 43:18
  electric evening. It's in reference to her the
• 43:22
  evening she spent, you know, with this band and how
• 43:26
  electrifying it was. And then.
• 43:28
  But I me as a Muppet nerd when that.
• 43:33
  When I read that line, like if someone told my 4th grade self
• 43:38
  that one day you're going to be a character that names the
• 43:44
  electric that the ban on your McDonald's class, I was freaking
• 43:50
  out. I was like, I can't believe that
• 43:52
  I'm saying this today. I can't believe I'm saying this
• 43:54
  today. And and again, it was written,
• 43:57
  you know, because I was learning so many things with Penny as a
• 44:02
  new puppet. It was the first time I've ever
• 44:04
  had a 2 camera shoot. So Bill was really helpful.
• 44:07
  I get you'd have to do a close up and A and a wide shot and you
• 44:14
  know when your brain is like, Oh my gosh, and I had to get
• 44:17
  different glasses because my glasses weren't working in
• 44:20
  there. So I memorized everything.
• 44:23
  You know, I I still had my papers in there, but I was so
• 44:27
  anxious about it and that was which helped.
• 44:31
  In the wheelchair scene, to be memorized because I literally
• 44:35
  had no monitor because there was no room for it.
• 44:38
  But but it was such great storytelling and it was such a
• 44:43
  vivid. It's so internal to who she is
• 44:46
  and what had happened. She's recalling it, you know,
• 44:48
  the greatest night of her life where she had the love of her
• 44:51
  life. So that was really.
• 44:52
  I really love that, which is cool because it does tie her, as
• 44:55
  you were saying. It ties her into their history,
• 44:57
  but it also sets, you know, that's what set up the story.
• 45:00
  You know, they signed a record contract with her those many
• 45:03
  years ago. There she was, she met, and now
• 45:05
  we're finding out when she met them, you know, and gave them
• 45:08
  the advance that they never recorded.
• 45:10
  You know, it all fits together. It's a it's a just a cool way to
• 45:13
  tell the story, you know? Absolutely.
• 45:17
  I forgot there wasn't a monitor in your wheelchair.
• 45:20
  Remember we? We tried.
• 45:23
  Jane and I were trying to figure out how to get me small enough.
• 45:26
  You know how to get me in there because I had to ride and I had
• 45:29
  to like ball up and everything. But I think we figured because
• 45:33
  she was so wrapped up, it will be like you see.
• 45:37
  Anyway. Right.
• 45:38
  You wouldn't have an eye line anyway, really.
• 45:40
  I go, Bill, I can't see anyway. And he goes, Oh well, then I
• 45:43
  guess you don't need a monitor. And I'm like, well, let's.
• 45:47
  So it was really a truth exercise.
• 45:49
  But that, again, is a penny line.
• 45:52
  Again, thank you for this line that totally identifies who she
• 45:57
  is. What do you think?
• 45:58
  You know, I got here because I faked it till I make it.
• 46:01
  No, I got here. Brutal honesty.
• 46:03
  That's what you got to do. You got to be yourself, kid.
• 46:06
  That be who you are. Be your truth.
• 46:09
  And she's doing this really, like, beautiful line about be
• 46:12
  who you are, yet she's just had plastic surgery.
• 46:18
  That also tells us so much about who Penny is.
• 46:20
  Like, of course, she wouldn't suggest lying about anything.
• 46:23
  She is so brutally honest to such a fault.
• 46:28
  It's that it's it's refreshing. But yeah, that tells you a lot
• 46:31
  about about who she is. Meanwhile, while the band is
• 46:35
  feuding animals, bunnies are multiplying.
• 46:38
  There's a whole bunch of them now.
• 46:40
  Leslie, did you play any of these bunnies?
• 46:42
  I I I did in the background. I think we all did background.
• 46:45
  Bill, did you end up using the looping thing that we did for
• 46:49
  the bunnies or no? Actually we ended up doing some
• 46:53
  squeaks that I I went and bought some toys at the pet store and I
• 46:59
  did Foley squeaks at home and then sent them in.
• 47:05
  Cuz they. I don't know.
• 47:06
  It was just that I I'm trying to remember your we did them with
• 47:10
  you, but they were like fart sounds and stuff and we had less
• 47:15
  control. And so, no, we actually just
• 47:19
  did. We ended up with more like
• 47:21
  squeaks and limited squeak bits and tried to time them, you
• 47:24
  know? But yeah, no, the arm farts were
• 47:27
  fun to do. That was the weirdest looping
• 47:30
  session. But yeah, we we all got to play.
• 47:32
  That was so fun. We all got to play background
• 47:35
  bunnies and stuff so that. Was I think it was the pitch
• 47:38
  too, like we're trying to get a little bit higher pitch and we
• 47:41
  couldn't. Kind of.
• 47:42
  Yeah, yeah, Leslie is is blowing into her.
• 47:47
  Forearm I have a. Trying to make like a squeak
• 47:50
  noise. Yeah, I have a gift.
• 47:51
  I I at parties, I can do celebrity parts.
• 47:54
  If you name a celebrity, I can impersonate them.
• 47:58
  On Ernest Borg 9. Ernest Borg 9.
• 48:04
  Yeah, that's nailed it. That's amazing.
• 48:07
  Wow. It's.
• 48:08
  A gift. It's like he's right here.
• 48:10
  Really good and a curse. Yeah, so Floyd and Doctor Teeth
• 48:17
  are still feuding. This is where we get this great
• 48:20
  scene We referenced earlier that Penny, Doctor Teeth suggests
• 48:25
  that Floyd is jealous that Penny made him a sweater that turtles
• 48:28
  his neck. And Floyd is jealous.
• 48:31
  And he says, well, Alaska Penny can make him one.
• 48:34
  And Floyd says it'll be very much appreciated.
• 48:36
  And they're shouting thank you, you're welcome very angrily at
• 48:39
  each other. It's such a kind of fight.
• 48:41
  I appreciate that about the mayhem.
• 48:43
  Like they love each other so much.
• 48:45
  Like, even when they fight, they're pretty nice to each
• 48:47
  other. Yeah, it's hard for hard for
• 48:50
  them to be really mean. They're they know they're angry
• 48:53
  with each other, but it's not about the words, It's about how
• 48:56
  they feel, you know? Yes, exactly, Floyd says.
• 49:02
  Just like the dark horse himself, George Harrison, He's
• 49:04
  going to take his leave and go home in polite protest, just
• 49:08
  like George did in Get Back. Yep, and another reference
• 49:12
  Everyone should go watch, Get Back.
• 49:14
  If you haven't watched it again, it's terrific.
• 49:16
  They make Muppet references through the whole thing.
• 49:17
  We're just referencing this episode.
• 49:19
  It goes both ways. Lips shows up with Susanna
• 49:24
  Hoffs. Nora had asked for a beetle, not
• 49:28
  a bangle. Susanna says that Lips is the
• 49:32
  one who taught her to walk like an Egyptian.
• 49:35
  So this is a great little cameo. I mean, what a great.
• 49:38
  You know, reference to 80s culture, but also, you know,
• 49:45
  giving us the joke of The Beatles, Bengals thing.
• 49:47
  And you know someone who I for. Like, for me, I love the the
• 49:50
  greatest hits of the Bengals. I don't think I'd recognize
• 49:52
  Susanna Hoffs if I bumped into her on the street, but now I
• 49:55
  will, because you guys gave her this wonderful spotlight on the
• 49:57
  show. Yeah, she was super.
• 50:00
  Sweet, super sweet off stage like she was like.
• 50:05
  Working really hard. She was shy.
• 50:07
  You know, I'll work your lines with it, you know, Like she was
• 50:12
  just, everybody was just so kind and giddy and like committed and
• 50:18
  heartfelt to be there. Like they they just put 100% in
• 50:23
  and she was just. Yeah, she had to, actually.
• 50:26
  One of the, you know, it's entrances that people probably
• 50:28
  don't realize, but entrances for humans and puppets at the same
• 50:32
  time. Are very difficult because
• 50:35
  you're doing half of a decking right.
• 50:41
  Yeah it goes under the door so that they can walk along there.
• 50:45
  So it's a little tricky because you know they're trying to look
• 50:47
  straight ahead and not look down at their feet So their safety
• 50:51
  net I I always say to them as us right we're down here so if you
• 50:57
  we've we've got I know it's not the most reassuring thing.
• 51:00
  But if you come off of that decking, we're here.
• 51:03
  We're gonna stop you, right? Right.
• 51:04
  You're saying she had a narrow path?
• 51:06
  She had a very narrow path. She had basically imagine
• 51:09
  yourself, only allowed to walk through half of a doorway, but
• 51:13
  you can't look down, right? Have you ever had a celebrity
• 51:17
  fall on you? Yes.
• 51:18
  Like that. Yeah.
• 51:19
  Really. Yes, yeah.
• 51:21
  Whose life did you say on? You.
• 51:23
  Cindy Crawford almost fell. Yeah, that's too bad.
• 51:27
  Dancing with Bobo. Yeah, well, it wasn't while we
• 51:30
  were, Dan. It was all rehearsing.
• 51:31
  But yeah, she almost fell, but she landed on Bobo and I just
• 51:36
  pushed back. But yeah, it happens.
• 51:42
  I like you're acting just like so non plussed by it.
• 51:44
  I just thought would be start my obituary with that one.
• 51:49
  Just could have fallen all the way off.
• 51:52
  Someone out there is bragging about how Sidney Crawford fall
• 51:54
  on that, and it's it's a less interesting story because they
• 51:57
  didn't have a giant bear puppet, right, Bobo?
• 52:01
  Yeah, Bobo was talking about it. The band decides to put their
• 52:05
  argument aside, so they get back to the album and they start
• 52:08
  playing a song. Doctor T says he wrote it about
• 52:11
  Penny, but Floyd says he wrote about Janice.
• 52:13
  Janice says she wrote it about herself.
• 52:15
  They're back to fighting. So Floyd says, well, he'll just
• 52:18
  write another song about his other true love soup.
• 52:22
  And here we get Soup to Dope. Jeff, this is a wonderful song.
• 52:27
  I don't know why it's not on the album.
• 52:28
  I know the song Slash. I mean.
• 52:31
  Again, I've said before, I feel like if I say it now, third time
• 52:35
  The Basement Tapes, if they just put out like just a mini release
• 52:38
  with all these little fun songlets would buy it.
• 52:43
  And I think you know, it would be.
• 52:45
  Yeah, it could be a Disney plush, right?
• 52:47
  It could be an item where it's like a can of soup.
• 52:51
  That has Floyd on it, whatever it is and you squeeze it and the
• 52:55
  sound chip is in there. Yeah, you pull the string in the
• 52:59
  back and then it sings the soup to do.
• 53:00
  Some MAS soup. Yeah, that's so good.
• 53:04
  Right. It's a product.
• 53:06
  That's it. It's my kids favorite thing in
• 53:09
  the show too. It's your favorite song.
• 53:12
  Of all the songs, it's the Soup to Do song is the favorite.
• 53:15
  Great, but what I like. Here and and tell me if this is
• 53:19
  a get back reference or not is that we're we're really seeing
• 53:21
  Floyd's entire creative process like when we saw Paul McCartney
• 53:25
  right get back in real time in the in the documentary.
• 53:28
  Is that kind of what you were going for?
• 53:29
  Yeah. I mean, there's different than
• 53:31
  that. You know, the something,
• 53:33
  something, something, something. There were two directions we
• 53:37
  could have gone and we discussed both of them.
• 53:40
  Correct me if I'm wrong, Bill, but one of them was that we
• 53:42
  would see them develop this song and at the end performed this,
• 53:47
  that song. So, you know, Love's the only
• 53:49
  thing that matters. Love's the only thing.
• 53:50
  You know, I think we just got swayed and so into the fact that
• 53:54
  they would perform a Beatles song on the roof, you know, it.
• 53:58
  It almost betrays what should be the story thing.
• 54:01
  But yes, watching in that documentary is on on the spot
• 54:05
  where also you're like, Oh my God, he just figured out, you
• 54:07
  know, get back like that. You're watching a classic in
• 54:11
  real time being created, something that we wanted to do,
• 54:15
  but then I think I just. Yeah.
• 54:17
  And I think, I think we ended up with that Beatles song because
• 54:20
  it was, again, supposed to be a documentary about love, right?
• 54:24
  And that's what the intention was from the beginning was this
• 54:29
  is this needs to be about love. And you know, and so you have
• 54:32
  the Nora and JJ stuff and all that.
• 54:34
  But yeah, I think you're right, Jeff.
• 54:36
  Initially we thought that that would be the song that they
• 54:39
  figure out. Yeah.
• 54:42
  So throughout the episode we would chart that song being
• 54:44
  written. But right, Yeah, it still works.
• 54:51
  No, you can't. Because again, it's a Beatles
• 54:47
  song. You know you can't go wrong.
• 54:51
  Well, I don't know. I've heard some bad Beatles
• 54:53
  covered in my life. But you did not go.
• 54:54
  We're going to pan up to the roof and they're they're playing
• 54:56
  #9. Right.
• 54:58
  You're right. Yeah.
• 55:00
  Imagine she's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot
• 55:02
  to say. That's a good Beatles song, you
• 55:05
  know? I like that one.
• 55:08
  Lips shows up with Paula Abdul. Nora asked for a Paul, not a
• 55:12
  Paula, and she's worked with The Muppets before it.
• 55:15
  In fact, Bill and Leslie, you both worked with Paula Abdul
• 55:18
  before her on Muppets Tonight. The boss men.
• 55:22
  Yeah, that's right. So sweet and kind, I painted
• 55:26
  shoes for her, my mom reminded me.
• 55:29
  I didn't realize they did. I painted her some high heeled
• 55:32
  sneakers that had clouds on him and stuff like that.
• 55:36
  But I I want to paint her another pair because I'm up.
• 55:39
  Gotten better, but she was so sweet.
• 55:42
  She's such a, you know dancers are so dancers.
• 55:47
  Talk to everybody. You know what I mean?
• 55:49
  They it it's just they're all they're just awesome people.
• 55:54
  I mean, I always find that talkers dance with everybody.
• 55:57
  That's the side of it. That's all interrupted.
• 56:01
  But I tell you my my little quick story.
• 56:03
  So when I first started dating my wife Christina during
• 56:06
  Muppets. Tonight.
• 56:08
  No, we didn't first start, but we've been together for a little
• 56:10
  bit. You got?
• 56:10
  Married wearing Muppets tonight. I did, and we weren't married
• 56:16
  yet, but Paula wrote a little note to my mom.
• 56:21
  Really. Yeah.
• 56:23
  Your I think your son is very handsome and talented.
• 56:26
  Something like that. The Wedding's.
• 56:28
  Off and Christina was like, what the hell is that?
• 56:30
  How? Did.
• 56:33
  How did she write to your mom, Bill?
• 56:35
  Because my mom was visiting or something and she she left a
• 56:39
  little note or something. Gave me a note to get like, I
• 56:42
  don't it was like, Bill, your tell your mom.
• 56:45
  Maybe it was like maybe it was more like that.
• 56:47
  I have to ask Christina. I don't know if she remembers
• 56:48
  either, but it was just something that you know.
• 56:51
  It felt like it could have been a flirt thing, but it probably
• 56:54
  was, and it was just. Herbie, you ought to find that
• 56:56
  note. Yeah, I don't know if I still
• 56:57
  have it, but Christina was like, excuse me.
• 57:04
  Yeah, yeah. But then I got to know her,
• 57:07
  actually, over the years, like, we actually ran into each other,
• 57:12
  all of us at like a lunch one time.
• 57:14
  And she's just so sweet. She's so cool.
• 57:16
  And when I saw her. We we we saw each other.
• 57:21
  And what did she say? Oh God.
• 57:27
  She said. Do you have that note I gave
• 57:28
  your mom, right? No, no.
• 57:30
  Can I have it back please? You know what?
• 57:32
  I I go, darn now. I can't.
• 57:35
  I blew it. I can't remember.
• 57:37
  We saw each other and it had been like, it's been like 25
• 57:40
  years or something, you know? And she looks amazing, like she
• 57:44
  doesn't look any different, you know, I was like, you look
• 57:47
  exactly the same. And she was like.
• 57:49
  Thank you. So you're not gonna say the same
• 57:52
  thing for me, you know? But no.
• 57:56
  She's super sweet. Super nice to come and do it.
• 57:59
  She's awesome. Did you reminisce at all about
• 58:01
  your Muppets Tonight Days with her while you're working with
• 58:03
  Muppets again, or? Didn't get a chance to really,
• 58:06
  you know, we were just trying to shoot, you know, But no, I don't
• 58:10
  know if anybody else, if anybody else did I.
• 58:13
  Apologize for grabbing her boob as robot Lincoln.
• 58:16
  Oh, you did? What a thing that that you can
• 58:20
  say is that you grabbed Paula Abdul's boob as robot Lincoln.
• 58:25
  That is the most bad. That's.
• 58:25
  The way the sentence. He leaned forward and there was
• 58:28
  a screw in this set that was going into my forehead.
• 58:31
  And I was like, ah, and then he's like, I'm like, I'm so
• 58:35
  sorry. She's like, oh, and Terry goes,
• 58:38
  Robot Lincoln would have grabbed her boob and I was like, he
• 58:41
  forestored. More comedy, See.
• 58:50
  No, I didn't apologize, but I could, I should add.
• 58:55
  Well, you know, no shade to Paula Abdul, but our next scene
• 58:58
  gives us maybe the greatest guest star on this entire
• 59:02
  series. Jackson Barretta.
• 59:05
  OK, the the second after Jackson Barretta.
• 59:10
  Is you got Morgan Freeman to dress up as zoot?
• 59:15
  He wanted it, so he loved it. How did that happen?
• 59:19
  I didn't know it was him, Bill. I didn't know it was him, he.
• 59:23
  Was who born in Freeman? No, he was.
• 59:28
  I'm like. I.
• 59:30
  Just I'm like, wow, they really did a number on you not
• 59:34
  realizing I was talking to him. Wow.
• 59:38
  Was he with all the other zoots when you said that?
• 59:40
  When were you looking to see his zoots?
• 59:42
  They were waiting to be loaded up.
• 59:45
  Right, so that makes sense, cuz you wouldn't think of all these
• 59:49
  suits. One of them is an Able.
• 59:50
  To the way my face look was not it was like.
• 59:54
  You know. He wasn't like, look what they
• 59:58
  did to you. It's.
• 1:00:00
  Incredible. But he was in the makeup trailer
• 1:00:06
  and Jackson was getting his makeup done.
• 1:00:09
  He had the nose. But first, tell us who Jackson
• 1:00:12
  Beretta is. Jackson Beretta is my son.
• 1:00:14
  To figure it out. Your son, Jackson Bretta.
• 1:00:17
  Yes. And Jackson plays the zuplicate
• 1:00:21
  who who has I think I mean he got a great line which is you
• 1:00:25
  know great and you know lost another role to Freeman.
• 1:00:30
  But and and he's only in there because Adam insisted on it.
• 1:00:34
  It was really about Adam saying no because Jackson while we were
• 1:00:38
  in our writers room Jax will come in.
• 1:00:40
  He'd do a bit every now and then or he'd do something you know
• 1:00:44
  and and Adam was like you know he should be Why isn't he doing
• 1:00:47
  that Isn't he acting what he is. You know he's an he wants to be
• 1:00:50
  an actor and he's like he's yeah, we should have him in we
• 1:00:53
  should get him in something And Adam just insisted that Jackson
• 1:00:57
  play this character. I was like I I'm going to back
• 1:01:00
  out you if you guys want him that's great.
• 1:01:03
  Every. Opportunity.
• 1:01:04
  Yeah. And and so that's how he got in.
• 1:01:06
  And I think he did a great job. You know, he really he did.
• 1:01:09
  He did. We did.
• 1:01:10
  Well, yeah. But how great?
• 1:01:12
  He mailed that line. How to play next to Morgan
• 1:01:14
  Freeman. You know, right.
• 1:01:16
  Next to Morgan. Oh my gosh.
• 1:01:19
  Yeah, Morgan Freeman came in. I was like, do you have any
• 1:01:22
  questions about the scripture? He's like, I just want to know
• 1:01:25
  if I could, my first line could be Sup y'all.
• 1:01:28
  I'm zoo. Yeah.
• 1:01:30
  I was like, yeah, I know. Yeah, can say that.
• 1:01:34
  But he was in the trailer. So Jackson was in there and
• 1:01:36
  Jackson, they were doing all the Jackson was getting the full
• 1:01:38
  zoot, you know, and and Morgan had a hat and the hair and he
• 1:01:44
  was like, how come I don't have a nose, you know?
• 1:01:47
  He was like he wanted more stuff, you know, which was
• 1:01:50
  great. He was into it.
• 1:01:52
  So he got a little more. He got glasses and a nose, you
• 1:01:54
  know? That's so good.
• 1:01:56
  Yeah. I love that he's he was so game
• 1:01:59
  he. Turned out he was a huge buffet
• 1:02:01
  fan, you know. Yeah.
• 1:02:03
  So, like, he hasn't done much with The Muppets.
• 1:02:05
  I mean, his biggest connection really was he was when he was a
• 1:02:08
  member of the Electric Company. He was the Electric Company.
• 1:02:14
  And they did a special called out to lunch with the Electric
• 1:02:17
  Company and the Sesame Street Gang.
• 1:02:19
  But no one who was working on Muppets Mayhem would have been
• 1:02:23
  part of the Sesame Crew in those days.
• 1:02:25
  So, you know, there's not, I mean, there wasn't anyone who'd
• 1:02:28
  be like, oh, Morgan's back. Hello, good to see you again.
• 1:02:31
  But yeah, I mean just. Especially with a list
• 1:02:34
  celebrities you'd never know if they would be game to like play,
• 1:02:40
  to have fun with characters like The Muppets.
• 1:02:42
  I'm sure you've worked with big celebrities who maybe feel like
• 1:02:44
  they're a little above it. So nice.
• 1:02:46
  Yeah, nice to hear about Morgan Freeman.
• 1:02:48
  Honestly, I can't think of many that have been.
• 1:02:50
  They felt above it, honestly. I mean, usually it's people that
• 1:02:54
  aren't up in that status that feel maybe a little more
• 1:02:58
  insecure about it and feel they need to be justified or
• 1:03:00
  something. But usually the top a list
• 1:03:03
  people are all in, They just love that they made fun of, you
• 1:03:07
  know, However you can have The Muppets tease them, tear them
• 1:03:12
  down generally across the bar. They tend to love it, you know,
• 1:03:16
  and actually brought up Electric Company.
• 1:03:17
  That's the thing that I actually was talking to him about when I
• 1:03:20
  had a chance just to greet him and see him, you know, hang in
• 1:03:23
  the trail for a minute. Just telling him how much as a
• 1:03:25
  kid, I just remember him and Rita Moreno, you know, really
• 1:03:29
  stood out for me watching the electric company.
• 1:03:31
  And and I just loved it, you know, It was like a big thing to
• 1:03:35
  me when I was a kid. He was like, oh, that's good,
• 1:03:38
  Cool, you know. All right.
• 1:03:40
  Well, I'll see you in there, OK. I had him sign my Penguin.
• 1:03:47
  Oh, you did? Oh.
• 1:03:47
  Cute. No, I already made that weird
• 1:03:51
  face at it. I actually, I had him sign a
• 1:03:56
  postcard, A replica postcard of the thing he sends Andy Dufrane
• 1:04:01
  and at the end of Shawshank, Zawaton Ao really.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah, so he signed that. Michael, do you recognize this?
• 1:04:07
  You got some autographs on this show.
• 1:04:10
  Jeff was he was all about getting he Jeff was good about
• 1:04:13
  it. He got Adam, who's just
• 1:04:14
  encouraging. Adam Adam made an entire show so
• 1:04:18
  he could just have his stuff signed.
• 1:04:21
  So he would be the first one to be like absolutely go and app
• 1:04:25
  Bill. Bill was like, don't.
• 1:04:27
  I was like what did? You get signed.
• 1:04:30
  What stuff? I know, I'm a guest star, right?
• 1:04:33
  Right. That's so fun though.
• 1:04:35
  I have a pumpkin signed by Billy Corrigan.
• 1:04:39
  Cheech and Chong Album signed by Cheech and Chong I had.
• 1:04:42
  What did you have Jackson Beretta sign?
• 1:04:44
  That's the one I said yesterday because I I tweeted the the
• 1:04:49
  script. Right.
• 1:04:50
  So for this episode, you know, it's my soul writing credit.
• 1:04:53
  And I had the cover page signed by everyone who was on it, and
• 1:04:56
  the one person I couldn't get was Jackson Beretta.
• 1:04:58
  He's tough to get. He's tough to get.
• 1:05:00
  Elusive. He's tough to get, but no, just
• 1:05:03
  for about for everyone. I I tried to get something, You
• 1:05:06
  know, he was. The one celebrity that was kind
• 1:05:09
  of above The Muppets. Yeah, he it was, Yeah, yeah, a
• 1:05:12
  little. And ask him about his career and
• 1:05:14
  his acting chops, and he'd get blue in the face and go, you
• 1:05:17
  know, all right, so maybe I can work it out.
• 1:05:19
  We'll see if we can work out getting that.
• 1:05:21
  Signature, please. Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  But yeah, I mean, it was just a blast just taking pictures and
• 1:05:26
  just, I mean, it was awesome, you know, and we'll get to
• 1:05:29
  another one in in a little bit who's just just insane, you
• 1:05:35
  know? Yeah, no, I'm excited to talk
• 1:05:39
  about that. But first, just to wrap up the
• 1:05:40
  Morgan Freeman stuff, he tells Zoot he just wants to know what
• 1:05:43
  it feels like to walk in his shoes.
• 1:05:45
  And so Zoot takes off his shoe and says, let's, let's ask Jimmy
• 1:05:49
  and Jimmy shoe. The shoe says that's not so bad.
• 1:05:54
  And Morgan Freeman has like a beat and says this very well may
• 1:05:58
  be the role of a lifetime. And he says it was such gravitas
• 1:06:03
  about a talking shoe. My God, what a guess Morgan
• 1:06:07
  Freeman was. And about Zoot, right?
• 1:06:09
  It's about, that's the role he's going to play, The guy that can
• 1:06:12
  talk to his shoe. Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  We'll talk more about Jimmy Shoe later on, but yeah, like, what
• 1:06:19
  a, what a great, what a great moment in television history.
• 1:06:24
  So in the studio, it's pure chaos.
• 1:06:26
  The Zoots are all playing their saxophones.
• 1:06:27
  The Bunnies have completely taken over the studio.
• 1:06:29
  Paula Abdul is choreographing Floyd's Soup Dance.
• 1:06:33
  So Nora kicks everybody out, and you know, JJ admits that he did
• 1:06:38
  all this. Buying the record label, giving
• 1:06:40
  animal the bunnies, lasering off all this body hair, taking hand
• 1:06:43
  gesture lessons. Yeah, that's good.
• 1:06:48
  I'm also saying this or realize, gesturing wildly with my own
• 1:06:51
  hands, unintentionally, because he's got a thing for Nora.
• 1:06:54
  He sells holds a candle for her and Kevin Smith says that JJ is
• 1:07:01
  Nora's Amy. The one who got away reverencing
• 1:07:04
  his classic movie Chasing Amy. It's a good thing we got Kevin
• 1:07:08
  Smith, by the way. Yeah, imagine if someone else
• 1:07:12
  was saying she's your Amy. It would mean nothing.
• 1:07:18
  Nora admits that love is hard for her, as it is for most
• 1:07:22
  people. But the band is not most people.
• 1:07:25
  The band is all about love and they make up.
• 1:07:29
  And that's what Kevin Smith needed for his documentary.
• 1:07:34
  Doctor Teeth also declares you know the band name thing Doctor
• 1:07:39
  Teeth, Electric Mayhem. It's obviously driving a stake
• 1:07:42
  through through the the band. So he says We am is R&B, they
• 1:07:47
  whom are known as just the Electric Mayhem.
• 1:07:51
  Of course quoting his line from the Muppet movie but omitting
• 1:07:55
  his own name from the band. And that's it.
• 1:07:57
  You've created a new, new history for the band and it
• 1:07:59
  makes so much sense in the future.
• 1:08:02
  Yeah, because we don't need it. We don't need Doctor Teeth's
• 1:08:05
  name in the band. We just need to know that
• 1:08:08
  they're the Electric Mayhem and and it feels like the hard thing
• 1:08:12
  to do as writers, I'm sure, which is to show growth but also
• 1:08:16
  get back to a status quo. What it does do though, is it
• 1:08:20
  does create marketplace confusion.
• 1:08:24
  Does it? I think so.
• 1:08:25
  We still have the Electric Mayhem, and there's also Doctor
• 1:08:27
  Teeth, the Electric Mayhem. But it's all good.
• 1:08:30
  T-shirts as if they're two different bands.
• 1:08:31
  Yeah, I do love the line. There's that little exchange
• 1:08:34
  earlier when Dr. T says, you know, we're all the front man
• 1:08:38
  and then and Floyd says that's because you're always in the
• 1:08:41
  front man. Yep, it's a great.
• 1:08:43
  Yeah, and he's not wrong. Yeah, that's a great line.
• 1:08:47
  It's like that weird thing too, where like bands complain about
• 1:08:50
  or keyboardists complain in bands because they used to be
• 1:08:53
  always in the back. And so that's why the Ketar
• 1:08:55
  wasn't was invented, so they could actually get up front.
• 1:08:57
  But Doctor Teeth really is always up front when the
• 1:09:00
  electric Mayhem's on stage. Yeah, yeah, he's kind of
• 1:09:02
  staging. On his part, yeah, kind of
• 1:09:05
  Floyd, actually. Floyd and Janice are more up
• 1:09:07
  front, but he's that's true. They're wings.
• 1:09:09
  He's a he's a wing and and zoom and lips tend to be wings now.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, that's true, yeah. But not like, driven into the
• 1:09:17
  back like some bands might do with their keyboardist.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah, yeah. Nora still kind of regrets not
• 1:09:23
  getting a beetle for the documentary, but they still
• 1:09:26
  succeeded in telling a story about love.
• 1:09:28
  They don't need Paul McCartney. And in that moment, Lips gets a
• 1:09:31
  call on his phone from Paul McCartney and declines it.
• 1:09:35
  Now I got to know, did you actually try to get Paul or
• 1:09:39
  Ringo to appear in this episode? Yes.
• 1:09:43
  I sent a video of Doctor Teeth asking Ringo to be in the video
• 1:09:46
  in the show. Wow.
• 1:09:49
  You know, it's just he was on tour.
• 1:09:50
  Yeah, it's just, again, all these musicians were on tour and
• 1:09:54
  like we had a very, very tight schedule.
• 1:09:56
  And you know, there's not much adjusting.
• 1:09:59
  Like, you know, Paul McCartney, he's in town in three weeks.
• 1:10:02
  But we're not right now. We have our director here, now
• 1:10:05
  we have, you know, our past, all these people.
• 1:10:07
  This was also seen that had a lot of people, you know.
• 1:10:09
  So it was a tough one. We had to, you know, work
• 1:10:13
  around. Absolutely.
• 1:10:15
  Abby got kissed by Paul McCartney.
• 1:10:17
  I'm just going to say it. So actors, Equity fights, AIDS,
• 1:10:24
  they had a benefit and they were doing the music of Frank Lester.
• 1:10:28
  Paul McCartney owns all the Frank Lester music.
• 1:10:32
  So he was with Broadway Cares, Equity Fights, AIDS.
• 1:10:35
  They'd asked if we could do Inchworm or something.
• 1:10:38
  So it was Grover, Abby and Cookie Monster.
• 1:10:42
  And we were, you know, like cookies eating all the.
• 1:10:46
  Cookies from Paul McCartney's dressing and we're just ad
• 1:10:50
  living, you know? And we walk backstage and Paul
• 1:10:54
  McCartney runs after us like Cookie Monster.
• 1:10:58
  You eating all my cookie. I I was just like, we all were
• 1:11:01
  just kind of like shaking because we didn't know what to
• 1:11:04
  say. And we're like, I need to put my
• 1:11:06
  puppet on my hand, so we. We interacted with them and then
• 1:11:10
  we were backstage and Paul McCartney sang one of my
• 1:11:13
  favorite Frank Lester songs. It's called Slow Boat to China
• 1:11:17
  and I Wanna Get You. It's just gorgeous.
• 1:11:21
  And he's singing it on stage and I'm totally swooning and we're
• 1:11:25
  backstage with our Muppets and I'm like, technically I'm on
• 1:11:29
  stage with Paul McCartney because the stage goes all the
• 1:11:31
  way back to the Wings. And he comes off stage and I'm
• 1:11:35
  standing there and I have Abby and like, I'm like, here's how
• 1:11:38
  magical because you're the one with the magic.
• 1:11:43
  He goes to kiss her. But I'm gasping and my natural
• 1:11:47
  reaction is to open the mouth of my thing.
• 1:11:50
  And I go. Eric's wife Mary snaps a picture
• 1:11:54
  and it looks like Paul McCartney is open, mouth kissing Abby
• 1:11:59
  angle. I can find it and send it to
• 1:12:03
  you. It's.
• 1:12:04
  I would love to see that, even though I'm sure the people at
• 1:12:06
  Sesame do not want anyone else to see it.
• 1:12:08
  We weren't allowed to tell anybody because normally Sesame
• 1:12:12
  Street's not allowed to do other nonprofits.
• 1:12:14
  But we. So we were under the radar and
• 1:12:16
  we were begging to do that. So I can.
• 1:12:18
  That's my little thing. I was like, wow, that's.
• 1:12:21
  Amazing. I love that we should probably
• 1:12:23
  mention that even the Ringo could make it into the episode
• 1:12:26
  that he does play on one of our songs.
• 1:12:29
  We are one in another episode. Wait, he does?
• 1:12:32
  Yeah, Yeah. Linda Perry got Ringo to play
• 1:12:35
  the drums on. We Are one.
• 1:12:37
  You know the Minecraft song. Whoa, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  So he's playing on that. Which is, yeah, it's baffling
• 1:12:44
  that this wasn't promoted more that Ringo was on a Muppet
• 1:12:47
  album. Yeah, But here we are talking
• 1:12:50
  about it on a podcast. That's what that's what we're
• 1:12:52
  doing. Yeah, I'm.
• 1:12:53
  Gonna go look at our album. You should listen to it.
• 1:12:57
  I mean, it's very, very cool. You can hear you're like, yeah,
• 1:13:00
  that's Ringo, you know, playing with animal.
• 1:13:03
  It's cool. It's very cool.
• 1:13:05
  We'll talk about that in the next episode for sure.
• 1:13:08
  So yeah, so we need a big ending to this documentary.
• 1:13:12
  So the band goes to the roof, just like The Beatles did at the
• 1:13:14
  roof of Abbey Road. They sing All You Need Is Love.
• 1:13:19
  As the band is singing, Penny starts to sing along in her Yoko
• 1:13:23
  Ono voice. And JJ immediately and very
• 1:13:27
  wisely unplugs her mic. And I feel like this is a true
• 1:13:30
  story is that you're nodding Jeff, remind me what this is
• 1:13:33
  from? It's John Lennon performing with
• 1:13:37
  Chuck Berry. On what show was it?
• 1:13:40
  Some not variety show, but some you know.
• 1:13:43
  Television show. And she joins in like they are
• 1:13:47
  jamming. It's awesome.
• 1:13:49
  It's magic, right? And then she grabs a mic and
• 1:13:53
  starts banshee screaming and someone has to just turn off the
• 1:13:57
  mic, you know? And like John, I think that's
• 1:14:00
  his best to sort of not acknowledge it, but it is
• 1:14:03
  fringy. Yeah, I I've seen this on
• 1:14:05
  YouTube and you could see there's a look on Chuck Berry's
• 1:14:07
  face. Like, what just happened?
• 1:14:09
  Who is? This.
• 1:14:10
  What is this? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:14
  Yeah, so it's a knob too, but also gives great closure to
• 1:14:18
  that. You know to Penny on that
• 1:14:20
  episode. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:14:24
  Nora and JJ seem to be getting closer, and Moog asked Hannah
• 1:14:28
  what his next move should be, and she says the only next move.
• 1:14:31
  Just let it be. That actually is not a Beatles
• 1:14:34
  reference. That just.
• 1:14:36
  No, no it's not. That worked out.
• 1:14:37
  That was just improvised. Yeah.
• 1:14:40
  Crazy. Yeah.
• 1:14:40
  Amazing. Wow.
• 1:14:42
  So what's interesting about this next moment?
• 1:14:44
  You know, we, I think you can notice that we graded the
• 1:14:47
  episode to make it look like it's film, so it can look like
• 1:14:50
  it's old film. And so we have the film run off
• 1:14:53
  here after this last roof shot and then it goes back to our
• 1:14:57
  regular show. We just wanted to be clear that
• 1:15:01
  that had ended. Absolutely.
• 1:15:03
  And it's also interesting because this is, correct me if
• 1:15:06
  I'm wrong, the only episode that kind of has what acts as A tag
• 1:15:10
  at the end of the episode in that way, But it's also the only
• 1:15:13
  episode that doesn't have a cold open with the gang in the van.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah. So we've kind of removed
• 1:15:18
  something from the top and we slap something on the bottom and
• 1:15:21
  it works. And this is such a great scene.
• 1:15:25
  I love this before we even talk about it.
• 1:15:28
  I was told when we got the press release that had the full list
• 1:15:32
  of all the celebrity cameos, we were told I think by you, Jeff
• 1:15:37
  or or Adam over social media, this is not everyone like this.
• 1:15:41
  Like there are names that were left off this list and so we
• 1:15:43
  were like okay, anyone could show up like that's.
• 1:15:45
  That was really exciting for us. As far as I know, this is the
• 1:15:48
  only celebrity that was not on that list.
• 1:15:51
  If I'm remembering correctly. Ringo Starr on drums on We Are
• 1:15:54
  One. Ringo Starr on drums, right?
• 1:15:56
  But this one for people we see on screen and it was such a
• 1:16:00
  great surprise. I think we, if we had known
• 1:16:03
  Peter Jackson was going to be somewhere in the season, we were
• 1:16:05
  like, well, he's going to be in the get back episode like easy.
• 1:16:09
  Quick story for this I. Would love it if you did.
• 1:16:12
  So when, you know, Adam pitched it, you know, this was the idea
• 1:16:15
  of Peter Jackson. Oh my God, Peter Jackson's
• 1:16:17
  possibly interested. Fantastic, we wrote.
• 1:16:21
  The entire script with Peter Jackson as the director, it's
• 1:16:25
  all Peter Jackson references. It's terrific.
• 1:16:28
  And then it's like, what are the logistics here of getting Peter
• 1:16:33
  Jackson to do this? Does he fall within our time
• 1:16:35
  frame? Is he available?
• 1:16:38
  All this stuff? And it was looking less and less
• 1:16:40
  likely that he would be able to do it within our time frame and
• 1:16:44
  we can't again like just bend it around production for this
• 1:16:48
  possibility. But it truly was a saga.
• 1:16:51
  And so at a certain point we knew that we could get Kevin
• 1:16:53
  Smith and but we don't forget we were like trying to.
• 1:16:57
  We reached out to whoever we could, like the head of the
• 1:17:01
  film, our friend who used to be at Henson, who became an
• 1:17:05
  ambassador. And that was like whoever could
• 1:17:09
  reach out and help us, yeah, with Charlie get getting like
• 1:17:13
  customs things, I think. They're likely faster.
• 1:17:16
  All kinds of things that had to be, yeah.
• 1:17:18
  And so we did. We we rewrote it and we made it
• 1:17:20
  Kevin Smith. That's why there's all these
• 1:17:21
  Kevin Smith references. And it works.
• 1:17:23
  It works great. You know, that's the thing when
• 1:17:25
  you get Lemons. We made, we wrote lemonade,
• 1:17:26
  right. So it just who could, how could
• 1:17:29
  it be anyone but Kevin Smith at this point?
• 1:17:32
  And we shot it and it's great. And it's even better than we.
• 1:17:34
  And this worked out great. We're so proud of ourselves.
• 1:17:36
  We did this. I think 3 days after that, our
• 1:17:40
  producer Michael Bostick walked into the writers room like ashen
• 1:17:43
  face. I'm like what's up?
• 1:17:45
  And he's like, so just heard from Peter Jackson's people.
• 1:17:51
  Peter Jackson's very excited to shoot his part In a week from
• 1:17:56
  now, he could be here. Yeah.
• 1:17:58
  And we're like, what? We can't.
• 1:18:00
  We shot it. We can't.
• 1:18:02
  I mean, we can't do. That's not even an option.
• 1:18:05
  But is he willing to do a single scene?
• 1:18:09
  And we talked about these people being fans.
• 1:18:11
  Yes. He only wants to do something in
• 1:18:13
  The Muppets. A huge Muppet fan.
• 1:18:15
  Meet the Feebles. It's his tribute to The Muppets.
• 1:18:17
  It's a very weird tribute to The Muppets, but it's his tribute to
• 1:18:19
  The Muppets. He loves The Muppets and he's
• 1:18:21
  totally down to do a single scene.
• 1:18:23
  Great. But it continued that way where
• 1:18:26
  it was like, ooh, yeah, you know what?
• 1:18:28
  He hurt his back. Yeah, he's he has to go to the
• 1:18:31
  hospital. Yeah, in the family or whatever
• 1:18:33
  with a bunch of stuff, right? And we just like it's I it's
• 1:18:37
  gravy. It's icing on the cake if we're
• 1:18:39
  able to get him, but obviously we we shot it already.
• 1:18:41
  We don't need it. If it can happen, fantastic.
• 1:18:45
  Our last day of shooting or the day before we find out he will
• 1:18:50
  be here tomorrow to shoot the scene.
• 1:18:53
  And yeah, I mean it's the last day of school essentially if
• 1:18:56
  it's excited, we're done. But we have a very full day.
• 1:19:00
  And then all of a sudden this black SUV pulls up and Peter
• 1:19:02
  Jackson comes out and and our director got COVID, so I ended
• 1:19:06
  up directing that scene. So Bill away.
• 1:19:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, I ended.
• 1:19:11
  Up and hilariously so, we go into Peter Jackson's trailer.
• 1:19:15
  Bill introduces himself and he's just like, yeah, I just want to
• 1:19:17
  talk to you about the scene, Peter Jackson says.
• 1:19:19
  You know my big fear, and I'm not even going to try to do the
• 1:19:21
  Peter Jackson accent, but he's like, my big fear is that I show
• 1:19:24
  up on set. And my actors have ideas of how
• 1:19:27
  they want to do the scene differently.
• 1:19:28
  And. Yeah, right.
• 1:19:30
  And he's like, that's what I'm going to do to you today, Bill.
• 1:19:34
  Very great. Like.
• 1:19:35
  Oh yeah. And so here Jackson then runs
• 1:19:39
  through his concept of how he wants to do this scene, which is
• 1:19:42
  a new scene, 2 scenes he wants to do, and Bill is just sitting
• 1:19:47
  there, nodding, encouraging. That's great.
• 1:19:49
  It's terrific. He's like, I want to do it like
• 1:19:51
  it's a DVD signing or whatever. It was.
• 1:19:53
  Well, the big thing he wanted, he wanted to come off as a
• 1:19:56
  pompous ass. He wanted to do what he wanted
• 1:19:59
  to do. What your vase does with his
• 1:20:01
  shows when he has his guests where they're always like above
• 1:20:04
  it. Like on extras?
• 1:20:05
  He right on extras. So he wanted to do that.
• 1:20:08
  So he had some ideas on his way in of how he could do that.
• 1:20:13
  And so I was just letting him unload, you know, let's see
• 1:20:16
  where we go. Right.
• 1:20:18
  What could happen? Who knows?
• 1:20:19
  Totally encouraging. He's like, I want to do a DVD
• 1:20:22
  signing. My wife and my daughter who are
• 1:20:23
  on their way, friend Walter bringing writer of all these
• 1:20:26
  scripts. They're stopping to get a bunch
• 1:20:28
  of DVD's so I could do this signing thing and I'm all for it
• 1:20:31
  because I'm like something, say signing.
• 1:20:36
  We go over to the set, we're going to do just a read through,
• 1:20:38
  just a quick read through of the scene, just so everyone's
• 1:20:41
  comfortable and again open to ideas.
• 1:20:43
  And I think it was sort of then that he was just like wrapping
• 1:20:47
  his head around. Well, yeah, I I felt like he
• 1:20:51
  because he had all these ideas and they're really fun, right?
• 1:20:53
  So there's a lot of fun stuff. And I thought maybe there's a
• 1:20:56
  way we can put some of the stuff he's talking and let's see what
• 1:20:59
  happens. But I said why don't we just
• 1:21:01
  before we make any decisions or change things, why don't we just
• 1:21:04
  read it with everybody so you can feel what it's like.
• 1:21:07
  And we're in the room and so we went and when we did that I
• 1:21:11
  think he realized it was probably funnier and and.
• 1:21:15
  And more on point than maybe he originally thought, but he did
• 1:21:19
  it. We it was with that adjustment
• 1:21:21
  of him being above, you know, being that pompous guy.
• 1:21:26
  And so we started to come up, Jeff was there and we started to
• 1:21:28
  come up with lines for him, you know to to help add that to the
• 1:21:35
  existing scene. So really, the adjustment became
• 1:21:39
  his attitude, you know, towards towards.
• 1:21:42
  The The Who he was and how he felt with The Muppets, you know?
• 1:21:46
  Which was his ideas. I'm holding up script pages
• 1:21:49
  right now. This is the sides for the day
• 1:21:52
  and just all his rambling notes at the end of the day I was
• 1:21:56
  like, can I can I have those and got them and signed them and?
• 1:22:02
  But it turned out great because he really did play it as this
• 1:22:05
  guy who, you know, I don't do. So we wrote this scene and it
• 1:22:11
  was like 7 pages long because we get to right now for Peter
• 1:22:14
  Jackson, It's fantastic. And then we have to cut it down.
• 1:22:17
  I'm like, please just save these two things.
• 1:22:19
  It's the Meet the Feebles reference.
• 1:22:21
  And I don't make sequels, I make trilogies.
• 1:22:23
  That's all I care about. Both.
• 1:22:25
  Great moments, yeah. And we got them.
• 1:22:28
  And. And he loved.
• 1:22:29
  I mean to meet the Feebles thing, he was like pinching
• 1:22:31
  himself. He's like, I can't believe you
• 1:22:34
  know that. I get to mention the Feebles in
• 1:22:36
  this and then that's his improv you know about.
• 1:22:42
  One's in jail, yeah. Two of them are in Witness
• 1:22:40
  protection program. And we still kept the structure
• 1:22:45
  of them at the table and you know, look who's here and you
• 1:22:48
  know, how's it going, PJ and all that stuff.
• 1:22:51
  Was there any pushback from anyone on the Disney side about
• 1:22:54
  the Feebles reference? I don't think they knew, I don't
• 1:22:57
  think. And we didn't hear anything.
• 1:22:59
  Yeah, that's fair bad, you know. Yeah, of course.
• 1:23:02
  And then when when he says the I don't make movies and make
• 1:23:05
  trilogies line, it sounds like to me, in the background there's
• 1:23:09
  like a Hobbit esque musical cue Is that did I hear correctly?
• 1:23:13
  Yeah, yeah. It's the Mayhem theme.
• 1:23:15
  I yeah, I work with Mick. I'm like pleased for this
• 1:23:18
  moment. Can we just have something
• 1:23:20
  that's reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, with a little sort of
• 1:23:23
  flute kind of thing and just mayhem themes?
• 1:23:26
  Great. That's so good.
• 1:23:27
  Yeah, a little touch. What a good sport, I'll tell
• 1:23:31
  you. You want to talk to hear about
• 1:23:32
  Good sport. Afterwards.
• 1:23:33
  He was done shooting, took pictures that he wanted pictures
• 1:23:36
  with The Muppets and everything, and everyone took pictures.
• 1:23:38
  And then he went off and Adam and I just followed him to his
• 1:23:41
  trailer, where we just geeked out.
• 1:23:43
  For the next hour there was there was no more writing left
• 1:23:46
  to do. So we just talked with him and
• 1:23:49
  he showed us clips on his iPad just from First of all, we're
• 1:23:55
  the only two geeks in the world who are not huge Lord of the
• 1:23:57
  Rings fans. So, like, I'm sure he was
• 1:23:59
  relieved to not be. I'm like, please tell me about
• 1:24:02
  heavenly Creatures. Let's talk about Dead Alive.
• 1:24:05
  Let's did. You ask him about the
• 1:24:06
  frighteners. I love The Frighteners.
• 1:24:09
  And he was showing us like, he's like whatever he on his iPad, he
• 1:24:12
  was showing us stuff and signing stuff for us.
• 1:24:15
  I mean, I just, you want to talk about signing?
• 1:24:17
  He had a Comic book Comic Con signing for me and Adam.
• 1:24:22
  So good. Wouldn't have been nicer.
• 1:24:24
  Sent me a they wound up sending me a Heavenly Creatures poster.
• 1:24:29
  They. Both signed.
• 1:24:30
  That's cool. Well.
• 1:24:31
  If we were just shooting, we were just, you guys were still
• 1:24:33
  making the show. Guys, were having your personal
• 1:24:36
  comment, that was it. Love it.
• 1:24:41
  So yeah. So the episode ends with him
• 1:24:42
  telling the band once again, act natural, don't look at the
• 1:24:45
  camera. And they look directly at the
• 1:24:47
  camera. And that's where the episode
• 1:24:50
  comes to a close. So Leslie, now that we've
• 1:24:54
  wrapped this episode up. Do you have any other fond
• 1:24:57
  memories of performing Penny or anything else you've done on the
• 1:25:00
  show that you'd like to share that maybe wasn't from the eight
• 1:25:04
  days a week episode? Yeah I well the the I just was
• 1:25:11
  this whole experience was just I don't know like Brigadoon for me
• 1:25:16
  you know like I couldn't it it it opened up.
• 1:25:20
  Can I be Jim Kelly? Yes.
• 1:25:23
  Definitely. I definitely felt like
• 1:25:29
  everything that happened, the world opened up for me at just
• 1:25:32
  the right time. And so I was just floating every
• 1:25:35
  single time. Like, I was super excited.
• 1:25:37
  Like who I'm the one small enough to fit underneath the
• 1:25:41
  hood of the bus to help animal rip the steering wheel off.
• 1:25:45
  You know, like I had just as much fun.
• 1:25:50
  Doing the puppetry that we got to do, like one of my favorite
• 1:25:53
  scenes was like I think it was you know Floyd was lifting up
• 1:26:00
  the just lifting up the the his base case or something.
• 1:26:05
  He was looking at a picture of animal and what I like is, is
• 1:26:09
  that it was all in camera puppetry, you know what I mean?
• 1:26:13
  Some stuff you obviously were green screen when we were doing,
• 1:26:16
  you know, we're in the suits and everything like that.
• 1:26:19
  But the moments that we work together as a team or you you're
• 1:26:24
  tossing floss and there's somebody underneath there.
• 1:26:27
  So I'm like those kind of moments that teamwork and that
• 1:26:31
  where you're all like breathing together with the character to
• 1:26:34
  make it happen, you know That to me is like so magical and the
• 1:26:42
  the artistry was so incredible. The.
• 1:26:46
  I really bonded with, like, I felt like the females on the set
• 1:26:49
  were super, like, supportive of, you know, the me I was.
• 1:26:55
  I just fell in love with everybody on our cast and crew.
• 1:26:59
  You know, we'd be underneath the set.
• 1:27:02
  Jerry and I would be singing Little Mermaid part of that
• 1:27:05
  world. Jerry's one of the grips in it.
• 1:27:08
  Spiderman. Yeah, and towards the end, like
• 1:27:11
  one of the guys that I thought was kind of low key started
• 1:27:14
  wearing wigs for no reason, he just.
• 1:27:16
  Started A. Different wig every day.
• 1:27:19
  For me the whole thing is, is that little by little, like
• 1:27:22
  people were so joyful and playful and so those little
• 1:27:27
  moments I will say, Bill you weren't here for this.
• 1:27:30
  The scene where Penny is on the. I know I missed that we were
• 1:27:36
  shooting on the other stage. The funny thing about that is
• 1:27:40
  that belt, the exercise belt, I lost four pounds, penny at
• 1:27:44
  least, but it was so hot. It was so funny because in order
• 1:27:49
  the belt was so loud. I was sitting on a box and
• 1:27:53
  pennies her her lovely schmata from Chico's.
• 1:27:58
  Which is I'm pretty sure where I should.
• 1:28:00
  I had one outfit that I love that it had palm trees on it,
• 1:28:04
  and I'm like, who wants in and out, you know?
• 1:28:09
  Like, I loved it. And also Bill would say Bill
• 1:28:11
  came up because I'm sorry, but she already wore that.
• 1:28:14
  Doesn't she have something else to wear?
• 1:28:16
  Like Bill was so concerned, like she wouldn't wear that again.
• 1:28:21
  You. Know she wouldn't do that.
• 1:28:23
  So I loved it. Like one time, one of my
• 1:28:26
  favorite moments was like I was standing in the boots and I
• 1:28:30
  can't remember who was one of the grips was trying to move.
• 1:28:33
  I can't remember his name. He was so sweet.
• 1:28:36
  He was moving the he was moving the monitor and I was like, I
• 1:28:40
  could see his underwear brand. I'm like, oh, let's do Secret
• 1:28:44
  Santa. I know what you want, that
• 1:28:46
  whoever gets him, he has to buy Calvin Klein, you know?
• 1:28:50
  So I think Bill will attest the favorite parts of the in between
• 1:28:54
  scenes. Whenever Penny and Bill were
• 1:28:58
  together, I laughed so hard. The chip scene was ridiculous.
• 1:29:02
  I was moving my legs. I was moving.
• 1:29:04
  Yeah, you made it. Look so good you made.
• 1:29:07
  It really look, it was so ridiculous that and we were
• 1:29:11
  laughing so hard, but it was so hard.
• 1:29:14
  And I got out from under there. And I don't know if you guys
• 1:29:16
  watched The Flintstones, but there was a scene where Fred and
• 1:29:19
  Barney went into a sauna and they came out this big.
• 1:29:22
  Oh. Yeah, I.
• 1:29:25
  Felt like when I was in Penny I came out and I was £4.00
• 1:29:28
  lighter. I don't know what happened in
• 1:29:31
  there. That looks so good when she's on
• 1:29:35
  that machine. You made it look just.
• 1:29:37
  I mean, you really believe it? Christina was like, is she
• 1:29:39
  standing in there? How is that?
• 1:29:40
  She really believed that? It's like, really good.
• 1:29:44
  Yeah, it's really great. It was silly.
• 1:29:47
  So yeah, all of it. I just.
• 1:29:49
  It was just we were so lucky to have you.
• 1:29:52
  Thank you. You're so good.
• 1:29:54
  Thanks, Jeff. You wrote a really that you guys
• 1:29:58
  wrote a really great, strong character that was effortless to
• 1:30:02
  play and even though she was big, she she was the the
• 1:30:06
  workshop worked so hard, you know?
• 1:30:09
  I mean, it was just worth it. There was nothing really hard
• 1:30:14
  about it except for having to not do it anymore.
• 1:30:19
  Well, hopefully we'll get more. Workshop really did rise.
• 1:30:24
  To the occasion to get these new characters out.
• 1:30:27
  And I mean, people have no idea what they go through every day
• 1:30:31
  to make sure these characters are ready and they're in the
• 1:30:33
  right clothes. Because we're shooting three
• 1:30:36
  different episodes and do we have the right props?
• 1:30:38
  And are they holding them? Are they attached?
• 1:30:41
  Are they, you know, they're the first ones there and the last
• 1:30:44
  ones to leave. It's crazy, crazy amazing.
• 1:30:48
  Russ from the Muppet Workshop. I had to give him a shout out.
• 1:30:50
  So we call Men PIN the MEN pin. So when Penny was off of me, I
• 1:30:57
  had this metal stick, you know, this metal pole at my back.
• 1:31:00
  And people are above us, right? And I'm in the pit.
• 1:31:04
  I was like, what if somebody's nostril gets hooked on the yeah,
• 1:31:08
  I sleem off and there's blood. What if they fall and they get
• 1:31:12
  impaled on my? No, we don't want that.
• 1:31:15
  If I had a tennis ball, I go, God put a tennis ball on there.
• 1:31:18
  I'm really worried that someone's going to stab
• 1:31:21
  themselves well, Russ. Came home and and he made this.
• 1:31:26
  Miniature can you explain what what we're looking at right now?
• 1:31:29
  OK, so it's a miniature penny head, but it's made like out of
• 1:31:34
  fleece. It's not felted for people that
• 1:31:37
  are crafters. It looks just like penny.
• 1:31:38
  It's spinning on my pinky. And so in between scenes, we
• 1:31:43
  used to have to have our hands up for eye line for the.
• 1:31:46
  For the fleshies, for the actors, they would just stick
• 1:31:49
  Penny. So I'd just stand in the scene
• 1:31:51
  and they'd talk to this little shrunken Penny head.
• 1:31:54
  It's. Like a shrunken voodoo head.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah, kind of creepy, but I love it.
• 1:32:02
  What a great, what a great souvenir, too.
• 1:32:04
  He surprised me with that. He just did it just for the heck
• 1:32:07
  of it. So that's how committed the crew
• 1:32:09
  and everybody worked so hard for the show.
• 1:32:11
  So you did a great show. Thank you, Jeff and.
• 1:32:15
  Thank you. Well, and Leslie, thank you,
• 1:32:17
  thank you for being here on this podcast.
• 1:32:19
  Thank you for bringing Penny to life.
• 1:32:21
  You brought such a, give us such a great original female Muppet
• 1:32:26
  character and every word in that sentence is something to be
• 1:32:30
  celebrated. So thank you for doing
• 1:32:32
  everything that you've done for the show and for Penny.
• 1:32:35
  I love it so much. I love it like hot sauce.
• 1:32:39
  What is that compression SOCKS. And then and.
• 1:32:42
  Filled in a bathtub with my little green olive.
• 1:32:46
  That's my girl. And Jeff and Bill, thank you
• 1:32:50
  again for being here. We hope to see you again next
• 1:32:53
  week. We'll see.
• 1:32:55
  Alright, we'll see TuneIn. You'll see if Bill and and Jeff
• 1:32:57
  have made it back. You'll hear.
• 1:33:00
  You'll hear, and everyone who's listening, thank you for being
• 1:33:04
  here for another episode of The Muppets Mayhem Backstage Pass.
• 1:33:06
  We'll see y'all next week. The Muppets Mayhem Backstage
• 1:33:12
  Pass is brought to you by toughpicks.com.
• 1:33:14
  Produced, written and hosted by Joe Henness, Logo art by Dave
• 1:33:16
  Halteen Junior. The Muppets Mayhem, Mark and
• 1:33:18
  logo characters and elements are trademarks of the Muppet Studio.
• 1:33:21
  All rights reserved. Transcriptions provided by Katie
• 1:33:23
  Lynn Miller, The Muppets Mayhem and credits written by Mick G
• 1:33:26
  Accino is used with permission. Special thanks to The Muppets
• 1:33:28
  Studio, Disney Plus, and the entire Muppets Mayhem family.
• 1:33:31
  For more from Toughpicks, find us at Toughpicks on Twitter,
• 1:33:33
  Facebook, Instagram, and Patreon.
• 1:33:35
  Thanks for listening. And until next time, rock on.
• 1:33:38
  I did that one, man.