Miss Piggy

Miss Piggy is one of the central characters on The Muppet Show, a force of nature who developed from a one-joke running gag into a complex, three-dimensional character.

Miss Piggy is absolutely convinced that she's destined for stardom, and nothing is going to stand in her way. Her public face tries to be the soul of feminine charm, but she can instantly fly into a violent rage whenever she thinks she's insulted or thwarted. Kermit the Frog has learned this all too well, since he's the usual target for her karate chops. When she isn't sending him flying through the air, she is often smothering him in (mostly unwanted) kisses.

Piggy's Biography
From modest beginnings (which she is quick to gloss over), Miss Piggy first broke into show business by winning the Miss Bogen County beauty contest, a victory which also marked her first meeting with frog of her life, Kermit. The rest, as they say, is history (and a lot of juicy gossip, too).

In 1976, Miss Piggy started out in the chorus of The Muppet Show. Thanks to her charisma and a correspondence course in karate, Piggy made her presence known, and soon became the lead chanteuse and femme fatale on the show. Quickly, her career expanded to include television specials, home videos, records and books. Her "how to" volume of advice on absolutely everything, Miss Piggy's Guide to Life, became a national bestseller, and her fabulous face has been featured on the cover of countless magazines too numerous to mention.

Miss Piggy appeared regularly in two sketches, "Veterinarian's Hospital" and "Pigs in Space".

Miss Piggy has starred in all six Muppet feature films, and she recently appeared in the 2005 TV-movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, playing all four witches.

She also had her own perfume called "Moi" sold at Bloomingdales in New York.

Kermit and Piggy
Eventually in the films, Kermit started returning her affections and (unwittingly) married her in The Muppets Take Manhattan–although subsequent events suggest that it was only their characters in the movie that married, and that their relationship is really the same as ever.

Family and Background
Piggy has two nephews, Andy Pig and Randy Pig.

From a 1979 People magazine article: "According to Oz, Miss Piggy's father chased after other sows, and her mother had so many piglets she never found time to develop her mind. 'I'll die before I live like that!' Miss Piggy screamed, and ran away to the city. Life was hard at first. People got all the jobs; pigs had to take what was left. To keep going, Miss Piggy walked a sandwich board for a barbecue stand. Desperate, she took a stage name, Laverne, and entered a beauty contest. She won and got her big break: a bacon commercial. This led to a season as mascot for a local TV sportscast called Pigskin Parade -- and then on to The Muppet Show."

Performing Piggy
The first draft of the puppet was a blonde, beady-eyed pig who appeared briefly in the 1975 pilot special, The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, in a sketch called "Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs." She was unnamed in that show, but by the time The Muppet Show began in 1976, she was recognizably Miss Piggy -- sporting large blue eyes, wearing a flowing white gown, and jumping on Kermit, the love of her life. The fact that she was intended to be a bit player is reflected in her formulaic name, which was patterned after Miss Mousey, Kermit's love interest in the 1974 special The Muppet Valentine Show.

According to Karen Falk, Henson Archivist, "When the idea for Miss Piggy was originally conceived in the early 1970s, the puppet was called 'Miss Piggy Lee' - something of a parody of the singer Peggy Lee. Almost immediately, the 'Lee' part of the name was dropped, and by the first season of The Muppet Show in 1976, she was known as Miss Piggy." In fact, she uses that name in the first Muppet Show Annual released in the U.K.

Miss Piggy soon developed into a major character, as the Muppet creators recognized that a lovelorn pig could be more than a one-note running gag. Frank Oz has said that while Fozzie Bear is a two-dimensional character, and Animal has no dimensions, Miss Piggy is one of the few Muppets to be fully realized in three dimensions.

Quotes about Miss Piggy

 * "She wants everyone to treat her like a lady, and if they don't, she'll cut them in half." -- Frank Oz in Time Magazine, Dec. 25, 1978


 * "In one rehearsal, I was working as Miss Piggy with Jim, who was doing Kermit, and the script called for her to slap him. Instead of a slap, I gave him a funny karate hit. Suddenly, that hit crystallized her character for me -- the coyness hiding the aggression; the conflict of that love with her desire for a career; her hunger for a glamour image; her tremendous out-and-out ego -- all those things are great fun to explore in a character." -- Frank Oz in The New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1979


 * "Miss Piggy's not aware of the fact that she's overweight -- she dresses as if she's 30 pounds lighter. So she has a lot of fantasy." -- Costume designer Calista Hendrickson in The New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1979

Trivia

 * Miss Piggy has a pet poodle, Foo-Foo.
 * In 1998, Miss Piggy had her own perfume released titled "Moi".
 * Neither Frank Oz nor Jim Henson broke character as Miss Piggy and Kermit, respectively. In 1989, a segment for a special celebrating the golden anniversary of television was taped in a closed session at CBS Television City in Hollywood, California.  Both Henson and Oz remained in character between takes, exchanging some rather colorful barbs in the process.  The segment, dedicated to television's coverage of the arts, opened with Miss Piggy performing some very expressive ballet moves.  During one take, Piggy's right ear flew off, unbeknownst to Oz.  The producer came in over the intercom to inform Piggy (not Oz) that there was a problem.  When the producer explained what had happened, Piggy paused momentarily, threw up her arms and "fainted" with a bloodcurdling scream of terror.  It would be a full five minutes before onlookers could regain their composure so that shooting could resume.

Casting History
Primary Performers
 * Frank Oz - from The Muppet Show (1976) to The Today Show (2002)
 * Eric Jacobson - MuppetFest (2001) to Present

Alternate Performers
 * Jerry Nelson - Herb Alpert and the TJB (1974)
 * Fran Brill - The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence (1975)
 * Richard Hunt - The Muppet Show Season 1 (1976-1977)