Steve Whitmire

Shares the same birthday (September 24) as original Kermit the Frog Jim Henson.

[on taking over the role of Kermit from Jim Henson] That was really, really scary as you could imagine. I had known Jim for thirteen or fourteen years at that point and I had worked with him on everything he had done with this group of Muppets. Not Sesame Street but everything else. We worked very close together. It was super intimidating. It was a great honor to be asked and I was just scared to death. So, Brian and the family made the decision, sent me one of the puppets. I took it out of the box. I'd had the puppet on before. I'd never performed it but had had it on my hand just going around the shop. I put him on and held him up in front of a mirror. I knew how to make the puppet talk because I'd been doing this for a long time and I fiddled with some of those expressions that Jim would do with Kermit. Then I opened my mouth to say something and nothing came out. There was no way that I could find the voice. The puppet just sort of looked at me like, "come on. You can do it". I took it off and put it in a closet and left it there for a month. I couldn't touch it.