Hello and welcome to another special podcast interview presented by Muppet fan site toughpigs.com.

I am your host Joe Hennis.

On May 9th, Kermit the Frog will be celebrating his 70th birthday.

Or will he?

This is a topic of mystery sourced within decades of misinformation.

Investigative journalists at the Tough Pigs newsroom are dedicated to getting to the bottom of this question.

And so we are bringing in a specialist.

Joining me is the CEO of the Jim Henson Company, executive producer on dozens of TV shows and films, and the daughter of Jim and Jane Henson.

It's Lisa Henson.

Hello, Lisa.

Hey Joe, so nice to be here.

This might be my first appearance on Tough Pigs.

I think we.

Actually, we talked once before back during Turkey Hollow, which was a while ago.

Wow.

OK.

I know you, you probably did a whole bunch of press back then.

So I don't, I don't feel jilted that you don't remember the phone conversation that we had.

But I'm so excited to get into this weird mystery of Kermit's birthday and your birthday.

So to start with, before we get into like the actual date, Kermit is celebrating his 70th birthday this year.

Either way, that's that's a true fact.

That is what's happening now in.

2025 there are 70 years of Kermit the frog this year and it is also the 70th anniversary of the Jim Henson Company.

It's also the 70th anniversary of Salmon Friends.

So all of all of those dates sort of converge this year.

So it's a really big year for the Henson Company, for Kermit, for our legacy.

It's also, by the way, I know you've covered this, but Kermit doing the commencement speech at University of Maryland this year is a pretty big, pretty big deal.

So yeah, yeah, it is.

It's a big year for Kermit, you know.

I wish that I had gone back to school so that I could have graduated with the University of Maryland class this year just to see Kermit give the commencement speech.

He actually did.

He did a speech the year before I graduated from Harvard.

It wasn't the commencement speech.

It was something called the class day speech, which is the day before commencement.

They do like a lighter one.

And a lot of comedians and, you know, interesting people have done that speech.

And my dad did that one.

So that was that was fun.

And we all got to experience that.

Yeah.

That's.

Great.

I love that.

So you being at the Jim Henson Company, it's celebrating the Henson Company's 70th anniversary.

Are you guys doing anything special to celebrate?

There are quite a few things going on in which I, oh gosh, I don't know if I can even recount them.

You know, whether it's anniversary screenings and a Fathom screening and various fan events, it's, it's sort of a miscellaneous of all kinds of all kinds of things that we will be touching upon during the year.

That's great because as fans that's all we really want is we just want.

I think it's we want the recognition and we want to be able to play along, which I think is one of the things that we really love most about what Disney is doing with the Muppet's 70th anniversary and, you know, really celebrating a different Muppet every week for 70 straight.

Weeks that's so great actually I I as a fan and a family member I got to say that is sensational that they're doing that it's also strange that it's starting at live season as well.

You know 50th season.

So it's a sort of a big, we have 2025's, a big anniversary, you're all around.

That's true.

They didn't.

They didn't invite Henson to play along with the 50th, did they?

No, because he.

Your dad was there, you know, like, I don't think.

They did anything for the war.

Yes, it wasn't it wasn't the most spectacular part of Saturday Night Live.

So he he's definitely part of the history of Saturday Night Live, but I don't think I don't.

And also, those puppets are museum pieces now.

They could never have.

They could never have shown up for the anniversary special.

Well, you say that, but then a couple of them were recreated for the Saturday night movie that came out last year.

That's true.

Yeah.

So we could see a little, maybe a tiny little resurgence of the Land of Gorge characters.

Maybe some fans would like that.

At least three of us, yeah.

OK, so we're, we, we were talking about May 9th and we'll get into what it isn't in a second, but first, what is it to you?

What is May 9th to you?

OK, May 9th is my birthday.

So I have lived my entire life like, you know, being wished a happy birthday on May 9th.

And a few years ago I started like getting hearing about like how fun happy birthday, Kermit the frog all over the Internet on my birthday.

And I was like, this is this is strange.

We need to we need to backtrack, roll it back a little bit.

I don't want to be a poor sport, but how did my birthday become Kermit the Frog's birthday all of a sudden?

Yeah, and according to the Muppet Wiki, as far as we know, the first mention was on NP Rs Morning Edition in 2005.

I have no idea where they got that information, unless it was just the misinformation of May 9th being the anniversary of the first episode of Sam and Friends.

We've done a little bit of our own research.

Karen Falk, of course, who your fans already know all about what an amazing archivist she is.

So of course she did do a little bit of digging.

And yeah, I just, I just, I want the headline is this is not a thing that Kermit the Frog celebrated his birthday on May 9th, You know, And if it was a thing, if it was real, if it wasn't just an Internet thing, I definitely would have heard about it before I was over 50, right.

So, so that's all I'm saying.

Like it, it's real now to a lot of fans and it's real to the Internet.

But it, it wasn't a thing.

And I don't, you know, I don't know if it deserves to be a thing, but it evidently is 1 now.

So when Karen did a little bit of research, she found out that a calendar was published in 2005, I think by Disney that showed May 9th as Kermit's birthday.

And I guess they must have decided his birthday would be the premiere date of Sam and Friends.

So, but accurately to be most accurate, the premiere date of Salmon Friends, which apparently was May 9th, 1955.

I never knew that when we were growing up.

We didn't talk about that particularly.

But that would most accurately only be the anniversary of Salmon Friends because actually the Henson Company was incorporated.

Muppets Inc was incorporated in A at a different time and Kermit was created at a different time.

He was created a couple months earlier in March and was used on television in that TV show Afternoon.

That was done before Sam and Friends.

So if you want to say that a fictional character was born, he would have been born a couple months earlier.

This is, I feel like we're breaking the story wide open.

It's just, it's just fascinating.

So, so OK, so you you mentioned that that you would never heard of Kermit's birthday being May 9th until you were much older.

So you didn't have to like fight over birthday cake with Kermit when you were growing up.

You never had that I.

Think that's what is the most creepy about this idea to me is that if it had been a thing in in our childhood, like, would I have had to share a birthday cake with Kermit the Frog?

Like it sounds like a scene out of Edgar Bergen's household, you know, with like Candy having to compete for attention with, with Charlie McCarthy.

And a very big coincidence is Candice Bergen's birthday really is May 9th.

So when I was yes.

So when I was growing up, I was well aware that she had the same birthday as me and that Edgar Bergen's daughter had the same birthday as Jim Henson's daughter.

And I always read those stories about, you know, Charlie McCarthy being treated like a real person in their home.

And I felt a little bit sad about that because we didn't treat puppets as real in our home.

Right.

Yeah, Yeah, that's what I've always heard is that your dad wasn't precious about the characters in that way, which I guess is nice.

It's like, I mean, so my birthday falls on a holiday.

So I do have like that kind of like, well, are you celebrating my birthday or you're celebrating the holiday?

And so you didn't have the same thing on May 9th of like, well, some people are celebrating Kermit and some people are celebrating.

Me and never heard it.

Never heard of it till like in the mid like 2010 or so.

Even these first message mentions that you're talking about, I never heard of that either.

So it was sometime in my 50s that I realized people were celebrating Kermit the Frog's birthday.

On my birthday, sure.

Anyway, I know, I know, I seem like a poor sport about it, but no.

Everyone deserves to have their birthday be there.

Even an old person like me deserves to have a birthday.

That's exactly it.

No, I don't blame you one bit.

But I also think a big part of it is the Internet, like the Internet becoming a thing around that same time where everyone not only can learn the information very easily, but then you have people to celebrate with.

I don't know if like before 2005 or whatever it was, people would have necessarily been like, OK, it's Kermit's birthday.

We're all going to get together and we're all going to have cake in real life.

But now it's like like a share of meme, and then we're retweeting the meme and then it goes viral.

And now everyone's like about May 9th, it's Kermit's birthday, and then it's gone from you.

Yeah, and the Internet is so certain as well.

So of course I tried Googling that just to see.

And I was like, what is Kermit's birthday?

And it's like 100% certain that it's May 9th, 1955.

OK.

And then but then it's interesting because those other questions that they OfferUp for you to click on are like, is Kermit alive?

And I was like, let me click that one.

It's like Kermit is not alive.

He's a fictional character.

It's like I what about could was Kermit born?

Well, I don't know that answer, but you know, they they do offer you some very strange questions.

Is Kermit a boy or a girl like?

We're getting like philosophical.

It is philosophical now, yeah.

It's just strange the questions that they offer you to to, to, you know, to explore on the Internet.

But they are.

The Internet is 100% sure that that May 9th, 1955 is his birthday.

Well, and some people know that in the Sesame Street Unpaved book, which I think came out for the 35th anniversary of Sesame Street, the writer made-up the idea that Kermit's birthday is on Leap Day on on February 29th.

So I mean, that's just as valid, like it's just a made-up day.

Yes, I saw online also a picture of Kermit celebrating his birthday with the Rockettes on a November date.

And then I also was told that with the, you know, prior to Disney, we used to sometimes say his birthday was September 24th, which is my father's birthday.

So, but more, more to the point, do fictional characters have to have birthdays?

Well.

I don't think they have to have birthdays.

I think it's just like it's nice for you to have a birthday and for me to have a birthday.

It's nice for everyone to have a little day of celebration, I think.

But I mean, more so, you know, I, I can going back to these calendars, which I mean, whatever we could debate back and forth whether or not they're Canon or not.

But specifically the Sesame Street calendars for me growing up always had character birthdays on there.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So I don't know what the purpose was.

Was it just to remind us kids that, like, Ernie's out there and he has a birthday, or are we supposed to do something on that day?

We supposed to somehow celebrate today's Slimy's birthday.

Celebrate however Slimy would celebrate his birthday.

Interesting question.

So if you were me, would you just give your birthday to Kermit?

You know, that's a tough question because like I said it, it is nice.

Again, speaking as someone who shares a birthday with a holiday, wait, what is your?

Who, who, who?

Who is your birthday?

I'm I my birthday is New Year's.

Day.

No.

OK, No.

It's how OK.

It's it's New Year's Day, which is it's sometimes nice because people stay up late the night before and there's fireworks.

But then the next day it's like, I don't know, everyone's celebrating something else or they or they're staying home.

Nobody wants to go out.

It's something that I I feel you've carried that burden your whole life, whereas I've only carried this burden for a few years.

Yes, this has been my birthday for my whole life so far.

But but at the same time, you know, I think it is nice to know that your birthday is being celebrated by something that's that's larger than you.

Like, I do appreciate the fact sometimes that my birthday is January 1st because it's easy to remember it's the first day of the year, you know?

For you, it's like people might remember because they already know that May 9th is supposedly Kermit's birthday.

Yeah, I can tell from how entrenched it is on the Internet and I'm going to have to either give Kermit this birthday and I won't celebrate on that day anymore, or we are going to have to share it.

That's very hard to deal with.

I do want people to know that my parents are not, we're not the kind of people that would have me celebrate my birthday with Kermit, that that never would have happened.

That's at least let's at least let's know that.

Let's at least know that yes, you are.

Not the Bergen family, no.

Right.

Well, so that does beg the question, if we could change Kermit's birthday to something we're like, if if we were going to tell, you know, like the Disney company and the Henson company, we're going to come together and say, OK, we're going to agree on like what Kermit's canonical birthday would be.

What will we what would we change it to?

And this may be a question more for someone who's like really into astrology to know.

I don't know anything about astrology, but if someone was going to say like, oh, well, he's, he really has the characteristics of a Leo, It's like, oh, that kind of narrows it down a little bit.

Well.

Apparently on one of the Muppet appearances, they said he was a Taurus, but that was only to say that he was a bull and would therefore be a bullfrog.

So it was only a joke.

But and but May 9th this is a Taurus, a Taurus sign.

I don't really know.

I mean, I have to admit, I think it's, I think the, the, you know, I think the train has left the station on this.

Probably you might be.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

And maybe you could also say at my age, like, I don't really need to ever have a birthday again.

Like I think I just kind of like wave the white flag and say I'm done.

Well, I mean, that could be a loophole too.

If you do get to the point where you say, like, look, I really don't want to celebrate my birthday anymore.

So you know what?

When people come over and they think they're celebrating my birthday, we're just going to say it's Kermit's birthday and we'll have a green cake.

You're making me feel.

Better about it now.

I think that yeah, this is a good approach.

It's like I have to see the silver lining, like and, and I, you know, I'm not around forever.

Kermit is around forever.

So he will he will take over the birthday forever and I'll just give it up early.

You and Candice Bergen can get together and you can watch everyone else celebrate on May 9th.

So well, I also wanted to ask, you know, we, we talked a little bit about, you know, what your parents didn't do on your birthdays, which as you said, was not celebrate Kermit's birthday.

How did you celebrate birthdays when you were young?

You know, we didn't have a lot of big birthday parties.

First of all, I, I think kids birthday parties were so different in those days than they are today.

You know, there was no arms race of, you know, who's got a bigger birthday party going.

You know, we didn't have bouncy houses or pony rides or any candy.

Bergen had pony rides.

I read about that.

She had a class.

She had a very, very classic Beverly Hills childhood that was really magical to read about.

I loved it.

I loved reading about her childhood.

But no, we were just kind of, we had like a normal suburban scene with really small birthday parties and, and, and when we were Young Living in Greenwich, CT, we didn't even socialize that much with other kids.

We, we were with each other a lot.

So we had five kids and that sort of made a party in itself, you know, when we were younger, as we got older like we did, we did some birthday things.

It wasn't a it wasn't too, too much of a big part of our lives.

Christmas was very, very big in our house, you know, and that was a big opportunity to get the giant Christmas tree that my father would cut down in the woods and, and they would, they would, we would drive up to a big Christmas tree farm.

He would cut the tree down, the biggest one that could possibly fit on the top of the station wagon.

And then, you know, it was, it was decorated with every ornament you could possibly find because it was, the trees were so big and we made a lot of Christmas ornaments.

We, you know, it was, it was a, it was a very, that was a very, very big festive time for us.

We also celebrated Easter, very lot of handmade decorated eggs.

I think birthday is a bit less.

Yeah, And you know, we we're, we're, we think a lot about your dad as being such a, a brilliant creative mind.

But your mom was, is, was such an artist as well.

And so I assume that a lot of that stuff, especially Christmas and Easter, you know, being at home with her and with all your siblings, I bet she was a big part of that.

She.

Really was Easter was her holiday, Christmas was my dad's.

He, he was a big, he, he really loved the, the buying of the presents and getting the right balance of like something big and fabulous, but something tiny and perfect and beautiful and beautiful decorations, you know, making ornaments of all kinds, you know, whether they were beaded ornaments or we made those, those baked ones where you create like a sort of a what looks like bread dough, create ornaments and you cook them and they become hard.

It's really, they look beautiful on the tree.

They look like cookies, but they last forever.

So he was very Christmassy.

My mother was very Easter and you know, we made, we did decorated eggs and had a big collection of Easter decorations and, you know, beautiful little baby animal, little stuffed, whether it's stuffed animals or China animals, candy animals, They were both fabulous holidays for us.

I love.

This little peek inside the the Henson house, it's a nice, nice treat.

So I have a few questions for you that are actually not related to birthdays, just because it.

It's been a few years since we've spoken.

It was such a treat to see you on my television the day of the Academy Awards when Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio won for best Animated Feature.

And there you were.

You were on stage.

Yeah, it was.

The best it was the best it was actually so such a literally a dream come true.

And you, you know, you don't dare to dream that you really will get to go up on stage at the Oscars.

But when it happened, you know, it had that surreal feeling like, oh, my God, it's really, really happening now.

It's so special.

We actually had a wonderful time with Pinocchio in the award season because Guillermo made such a special film that it was it won every award.

And so it was like a romp through the award season.

A victory lap and a romp that everybody had fun.

And you know, there were some other good films, but we at a certain point we knew he was going to win them all.

And he was.

So he's such a delightful, incredible person to spend time with.

It was it was a very special time for us.

I'm so glad to hear that.

He seems like a nice guy and the film was amazing.

I truly, truly loved it 15.

15 years in the making for us.

Wow, yeah, I mean, and that's got to be nice too, for something like that to pay off.

So many movie projects are like that.

They just take forever.

And sometimes we feel like fools like why are we, Oh my God, we have to find a new financier for this.

It will be the 4th 1.

You know, it happens on a lot of projects and sometimes you think, oh, am I just, am I just being a, am I just being naive thinking this is ever going to happen happened.

So when when something does come to pass after 15 years and is brilliant and is a classic, it, it kind of gives you a bit more faith in the whole, in the whole roller coaster of, you know, creative development.

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

And then Speaking of seeing you on my television screen once again, you got a great cameo in an episode of Fraggle Rock.

Back to the Rock that I just think that's.

More of an Easter egg than a cameo.

Okay, fair.

I think it's.

It's like a little a little bit of call me a little Colombie, but so you appear in a photograph of Doc shaking hands with the Dean of her university and getting her.

Doctorate.

Yeah.

Right, right.

What a joy, first of all, just to see you on screen because you know, there's only so many of us who you know, who know what Lisa Henson looks like who were watching the show.

And so that was obviously for me, that was just for me to to see and enjoy.

But can you tell me how that came about for you?

You know, John Tartaglia is just a, he's just a softy.

You know, he's, he's a, he's one of, he's one of you guys.

He's a, he's a fan in addition to being an incredible showrunner.

So these all these ideas come from him.

Great.

That doesn't surprise me one bit.

And I think a lot of people are curious about the future of the Jim Henson Company's offices, which is an interesting thing just to be curious about because you know, it's it's just a place where people work, not a it's not a public location.

But could you give us any update about how things are going with with a sale the move anything at this we?

Sold We sold the lot at the end of of 2024 to a wonderful partnership of John Mayer and the director Mick G and John Mayer, who has been working in the recording studio here for a long time.

He was he actually kept his offices here and spent, you know, he spent a lot of time in the recording studio.

And so he now as a co-owner of the lot is kind of running the recording business.

And Mick G loves Hollywood history, you know, so he is already doing some beautiful work on on the lot, you know, restoring the gardening, the landscaping to more the Charlie Chaplin aesthetic, which is exciting.

And we're still here on the lot till, you know, we had we made an arrangement to stay for a year so that we could find, you know, appropriate office space.

But we're not ready to announce where we're moving.

But we will move.

We will be moving before the end of the year to another office.

Hopefully.

It will not be officey.

We're not like officey people.

Hopefully it'll be homey and creative and a little bit special because you know, we don't, we don't fit in an office tower, right?

You have a reputation to uphold, you know Exactly.

Being the.

Kind of place where like this kind of, you know, Hensony Muppity magic happens.

And I think the thing that a lot of fans by which I mean myself are concerned about is a lot of the the things that you have on display like Kermit as Charlie Chaplin and, you know some of the the artwork that you have the the relics.

Are you gonna make sure they're homes for all that as well of?

Course, you know, we, we are so proud of the archives.

As I said, I was talking about Karen Fock.

Like, you know, we, we take care of our collection very well, but we also have a smaller and smaller collection of artifacts and puppets as so many of them have been donated to the appropriate museums, which is really where what we wanted to see happen.

You know, once we, once we decided not to do our own museum, which is a decision that we made in the mid 90s, we did a full study after my dad passed of what would it, what would it look like to, you know, actually, we had considered turning the, the offices in New York City into, into the museum on 69th St.

and it just didn't pencil out at all because the building couldn't be made ADA compliant.

It didn't really have an elevator, it didn't had like 3 toilets and anyway, it just wasn't going to work.

So once we decided not to have our own museum, we have worked with Bonnie Erickson and Karen and a number of other really skilled people at cataloguing and understanding our collection and then carefully giving all the pieces, most all the really important historical pieces to different museums.

So we, we have a few things decorating the offices, but it's it's not a big collection actually.

Yeah, yeah.

I just wanted to review all of that like you need to know.

No, of course.

Well, look, it's all important to us so well, Lisa, thank you so much for being here and for joining us for this conversation.

It's great to just get the record straight about what May 9th is and what it's not.

Well, thank you thank you so much for for wishing me a happy birthday and I I, it may be the last time I celebrate on May 9th.

So that was but it's it's good.

We'll, we'll mark it.

We'll mark it on the calendar.

Yes, we're going out with a.

Bang.

We're going out with a bang.

Last birthday.

Exactly.

Well, happy, happy birthday, Lisa and you.

Happy birthday Salmon Friends.

If we're not celebrating Kermits, we'll celebrate Salmon Friends and Henson Company.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you.