Andrew Williams

C.J. Casciotta: Welcome to Change Log by Reculture, our series featuring leaders navigating change in their own words. My name is C.J. Casciotta. If you know me, you know what a huge fan I am of the Muppets and the influence Jim Henson has had on my work. So this episode is a pretty special treat for me, and it gets surprisingly strategic, too. We're listening to writer, director, and producer Andrew Williams, who, among other things, has spent nearly twenty years working on projects with The Muppets. He wrote for the acclaimed The Muppets Mayhem special for ABC and Disney+, which was nominated for multiple Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, for which Andrew was nominated alongside his fellow writers. In addition, he's collaborated with studios, creators, comedians, musicians, and brands ranging from Netflix and Google to Bill Burr and "Weird Al" Yankovic. One of his specialties is franchise storytelling and experiential entertainment. Most recently, he worked on Disney World's Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets, and he served as an executive producer on Muppets Haunted Mansion. That makes him a perfect person to talk to about helping stories evolve and endure. Here's my conversation with Andrew Williams.

C.J. Casciotta: Andrew, I'm really excited about this episode of Change Log because we get to talk about this beloved piece of legacy IP that so many of us grew up with and continue to love: The Muppets. I ask every guest the same four questions, and I'm especially excited to ask the first one in the context of this brand. From your vantage point, what has needed to change over the years when it comes to the Muppets?

Andrew Williams: When I first started working on the Muppets back in 2008, I had an early conversation that's really stayed with me. It became a kind of mantra for the work. At the time, I was working at a company called Soapbox Films. We pitched the idea of bringing the Muppets onto YouTube, which eventually became the series that included Bohemian Rhapsody, Popcorn, and Ode to Joy. It really served as Disney's relaunch of the IP. As part of that process, we met with a number of veterans who had worked with Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and the original creative team. I remember asking someone from the workshop a really simple question: "How does it work?" She thought for a moment and then gave me an answer that has stuck with me ever since. "It's different every time." That answer gets right to the heart of who the Muppets are. If you look at The Muppet Movie, Jim Henson didn't conceive of it as simply an extension of The Muppet Show. It had its own cinematic language. It sounded different. The music Paul Williams wrote was different. Every project found its own voice. In a way, change was baked into the source code of the Muppets from the very beginning. Even within The Muppet Show, they'd constantly push the form. One week the curtain opens and suddenly you're underwater. They were experimenting with chroma key and green screen back in the 1970s. Jim was always looking for the next creative possibility, whether that was radio control, virtual puppetry, or entirely new storytelling formats. To me, that's what's always needed to change. Change itself. The Muppets have always embraced change as part of their identity.

C.J. Casciotta: That's part of the brand. It's almost a meta concept. Every Muppet story revolves around change in some way. Something goes differently than expected. Then you have this entire property, this world Jim created, that also embraces change in almost every expression of itself. It's fascinating how deeply embedded that idea is.

Andrew Williams: I think everyone who's worked on the Muppets over the years keeps that in mind. Change is good. You can't do your best work without it.

C.J. Casciotta: Here's a tougher question. Is there anything that's needed to be left behind in order for that change to happen? Has there ever been something that people realized they were holding onto too tightly?

Andrew Williams: That's an interesting question because people often describe the Muppet characters as timeless. I don't necessarily think of them that way. I think they're present-tense characters. They exist here, and they exist now. That's vital to who they are. They don't have a rigid canon the way something like Star Wars or Marvel does. There's an emotional canon, certainly, but not a strict continuity. They don't reboot. They simply are. Behind the scenes, I don't think anything really gets left behind. Instead, everything gets built upon. Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Juhl, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, who's still with the troupe. All of those brilliant artists created something the rest of us are fortunate enough to build on. We stand on the shoulders of giants. That continuity, the feeling that it's all one long creative journey, is unique to these characters. Even Gonzo is portrayed differently today because Dave Goelz is different today. He's changed. He's still Gonzo, just as we're still ourselves even though we evolve, grow, and discover new parts of who we are.

C.J. Casciotta: It's interesting because everything builds on what came before. The alternative would be to become incredibly precious about preserving the vintage nostalgia of it all. But it sounds like what actually had to be left behind, especially when you launched the YouTube series, was the idea that the Muppets couldn't evolve. That they couldn't exist in new mediums or find new expressions.

Andrew Williams: Yes. That's exactly it. In fact, that was really the core of our original pitch. One of the nicest things we were told after we'd finished shooting the first round of YouTube videos was, "We've been hearing this pitch for years. You were just the first people who understood YouTube and understood the Muppets." I thought that was incredibly humbling. Of course, part of it was timing. We were lucky. But our perspective was simply that YouTube had become the new variety show. The Muppets are creators. They make things. Of course they'd be making videos there. I think that's why people often think about the Muppets through whatever their own entry point was. For some people, it's The Muppet Show. For others, it's the movies. For a huge number of people, it's The Muppet Christmas Carol. Everyone tends to freeze the Muppets at the moment they first discovered them. But they can always become more.

C.J. Casciotta: In the middle of all that evolution, what's one thing you've learned over twenty years of working with these characters?

Andrew Williams: Thank you for limiting me to one. I think the biggest lesson was learning just how deeply you have to embrace the craft itself. You can write the funniest scene imaginable between two characters, but if you ignore the fact that these are puppets, it's probably going to fall flat once you put it on its feet. The mechanics matter. The visual language matters. The way you stage something matters. You have to embrace the craft or it doesn't feel like the Muppets. I always think about it this way. If you walked onto a stage in a tuxedo and pulled a bird out of your pocket, I might be surprised. But I wouldn't necessarily call it magic. The craft is what creates the magic. The other lesson is collaboration. It takes two people just to make Kermit clap his hands. That tells you everything. The collaboration is part of the magic itself.

C.J. Casciotta: Earlier you mentioned something that really stuck with me. I said, "Well, it's not animation." And you said, "Actually, it is." It's a form of animation. It's such a fascinating blend of art and science. Why do you think that craft has remained so relevant?

Andrew Williams: I think it's the fact that it's happening in real time. It's tactile. It's human-made. It's complicated. The characters themselves are complicated, and the process is complicated. If you do it well, all of that effort becomes invisible. But at the same time, I think audiences can still feel it. We all have an instinct for high-effort entertainment versus low-effort entertainment. There's room for both. We all enjoy something casual sometimes. But with the Muppets, you can feel how much care went into it. There's a phrase I sometimes think about: as below, so above. What's happening below the frame is very similar to what's happening above the frame. The Muppet characters care deeply about what they're presenting to the audience. The people making the Muppets feel exactly the same way. The performers. The writers. The builders. The crew. Everyone cares deeply about what they're putting into the world. I think that's another one of the secrets.

C.J. Casciotta: That's such a great answer. Last question. What hasn't changed? What can never change? What are you carrying forward in the middle of all this evolution? What has to endure as everything else changes?

Andrew Williams: At the end of the day, I think the reason these characters endure is their humanity. Yes, it's our human hands that literally bring these characters to life. But I've also always thought of the Muppets as a celebration of humanity. They don't exist without a performer inhabiting the character. It's not just a voice. It's a complete performance happening in real time. That humanity is what makes them work. And then there's who the characters are. They're complicated. They're flawed. They're absurd. But they're also deeply relatable. They're this wonderful collection of contradictions. We can all look at Miss Piggy and recognize that she's completely over the top, but at the same time think, "I know someone like that." To me, that's the key to every great Muppet character. Their flaws are also their strengths. Fozzie never gives up, but that's also why he can't read the room. We respond to those contradictions because we recognize ourselves in them. That's the part that can never go away. They're not just joke machines. They're living, breathing characters... even though they aren't literally living and breathing. They're profoundly human, despite being frogs, pigs, bears, birds, and whatever Gonzo happens to be.

C.J. Casciotta: That's so good. Bonus question, just because I geek out on this so much. Where do you think that originally came from? I remember reading Jim Henson's biography and learning that, during the first season of The Muppet Show, one of the notes he kept getting was that it needed more story, more narrative arc. I can imagine that being frustrating because every one of those characters already carried this enormous internal story. They each had conflict. They had contradictions. Where do you think that depth originally came from?

Andrew Williams: I'm answering this more as a fan than anything else. But based on the conversations I've had with people who were there, I think it came from Jim's love and affection for the people making it. The characters were the people. The people were the characters. Every character had a life beyond what you saw on screen. And thank you for indulging me while I talk about the Muppets like I'm discussing The Wire.

C.J. Casciotta: I take it that seriously, by the way.

Andrew Williams: I think that's really where it came from. It was always a troupe, both in terms of the performers and the larger group of people who brought everything to life. The workshop. The camera crew. Every department. It was always a collective effort. I think that care is the thing.

C.J. Casciotta: Well, thank you for being one of the people who's helped steward the Muppets and continues to do so. For people like me, and I think millions of others, it's really meaningful to know they're in such good hands.

Andrew Williams: Thank you. It's a privilege to be part of it.