Are Muppet performers just voice actors?

Frank Oz's facial expression when being called "the voice of" his characters on The Colbert Report

A common public misconception is to think of the Muppet performers as "the voice of" their characters, rather than supplying puppetry, voice, and personality. This usually comes from the tendency to confuse the Muppet characters with animated cartoons or assume the processes are similar, or suggests that the performers are interchangeable and expendable as long as the voice can be imitated. Mainstream news headlines tend to use "voice" when covering obituaries of performers or casting changes.

The Muppet performers themselves have taken issue with this characterization, particularly Frank Oz. During his appearance on The Colbert Report, Oz interrupted a query by Stephen Colbert (then maintaining his typically clueless political pundit persona). Colbert began, "Everybody knows you, of course, as being the voice of Miss Piggy, the voice of Grover, the voice of Fozzie Bear, the voice of Animal, and the voice of Yoda..." Frank Oz interrupted to say "Yeah, it's so weird, though... That you say the voice of. So who does the character?... Physically, how is it done?" Oz elaborated further: "People are so used to animation that people just do the voices, but when the performers, the Muppets do it, the voices are only 10% of it. The rest is 90% of it. 92%."

In 2018, the Muppet Guys Talking Twitter account tweeted:

“In “Muppet Guys Talking,” all of the Guys agree that there’s a single “biggest misconception” about being a Muppet performer. Have any thoughts on what it might be? (We’ll have the answer tomorrow.)”
—Tweet from Muppet Guys Talking 1/9/18

““Who does the voice”? People always ask that. It’s the single biggest misconception about being a Muppet performer: Even longtime fans don’t always [know] we don’t “just” do the voice -- we bring the character to life through a complex performance involving hands, arms, body and voice.”
—Tweet from Muppet Guys Talking 1/10/18

Exceptions

Since the 1960s, the standard approach for principal Muppet characters has been to have the main puppeteer supply the voice. The exceptions have generally been made for celebrities, using the voices of Sesame Street cast, singing vocals, or female voices redubbing a male puppeteer, among others. Other voice-only instances have been due to production schedules or health of the performer (the later years of Jerry Nelson and Caroll Spinney).

Conversely, most productions from Jim Henson's Creature Shop dubbed in the character voices later (although on occasion the original puppeteer was retained). This has typically been due to a combination of the post-production process (due to ambient noise or technical limitations of on-set recording) and a desire to cast celebrities or established character actors.

See also

Category:Muppet Voice Actors