“Muppet Show” Director Alex Timbers Worked Off Original Show's Blueprints to Perfect the Details, 50 Years Later
- - “Muppet Show” Director Alex Timbers Worked Off Original Show's Blueprints to Perfect the Details, 50 Years Later
Angela AndaloroFebruary 13, 2026 at 11:00 PM
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The Muppet Show in 1974 (left) and today
Henson Associates/The Jim Henson Company;Disney
The Muppet Show has premiered to wonderful reviews and tons of excitement from longtime fans of the characters
The original run of The Muppet Show aired from 1974 to 1981
Director Alex Timbers told the LA Times about learning what it takes to make a Muppets production and why handling it the same way the 1970s production did was worth the work it took
The Muppet Show team pulled out all the stops to give fans of the original an authentic feel.
Director Alex Timbers spoke with the LA Times about what went into filming the production and about approaching something made for TV from a theatrical perspective
Logistically, the execution of this special required determining the appropriate scale for the Muppet Theater. To that end, Timbers and the team found the original blueprints from 1976, and worked off of them.
“We really studied scale,” he says. “A lot of the Muppet performers felt that when people have re-created the Muppet Theater in the past, the scale hasn’t totally been right.”
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Timbers had to learn about staging the Muppets in a scene and how, in turn, he'd have to stage performers. There are also guidelines for the scale of the Muppets, such as "if you’re dealing with a Muppet to Muppet scene, everything has to be in 3/4 scale. If there’s a human in the scene with the Muppet, it’s a 7/8 scale."
“There are all these little tricks to make sure that a mug feels the right size for Kermit and for that desk to feel the right height,” Timbers explained.
“The math of it is really challenging, but also really rewarding," he continued, noting that the Muppets themselves range in size. Approximately 180 Muppets are available to the production.
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Further, Timbers was delighted to discover that Muppets' performers stay in character between takes.
“When you’re giving a note to Kermit, you’re giving a note to Kermit, and Kermit is responding as Kermit,” he said. "For performers like Sabrina, to be like, ‘You’re doing a scene with Kermit,’ and then in between Kermit is just talking while we’re resetting or changing the lighting."
"She can continue to chit-chat with Kermit. And that was really charming for her and certainly charming for us. And how can you not have fun on a set like that?" he concluded.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
