Yesterday, on the Las Culturistas podcast, Jennifer Lawrence stated that she and Emma Stone were producing a Miss Piggy solo movie, with Broadway favorite Cole Escola writing. And of course, since you’re a Muppet fan on the Internet, you probably heard this already a hundred times on each and every one of your groupchats or right here on ToughPigs.com. And if you, like me, are a queer Muppet fan, you’ve heard it a thousand times as every single fellow queer person you know loses their minds about this possibility. Do you know how many Discord servers I’m on where this was posted immediately???
As is customary, we here at ToughPigs are taking this news with several grains of salt. Typically, Disney doesn’t announce its films as a passing remark on Bowen Yang’s podcast. The TP staff chatted yesterday, and we’re currently wondering if maybe this is a spec script Lawrence, Stone, and Escola are planning on pitching to Disney. It’s tough to say anything for certain until we hear from a Disney representative specifically.
But let’s have some fun here for a moment and say this movie is going to be real. I spent a lot of time yesterday talking about this with my lovely spouse, Eli Lee, writer and occasional ToughPigs special guest. Like Cole Escola, Eli is nonbinary, and they’re a big fan of Escola’s. If you ask Eli and me, this movie is a phenomenal idea, for two big reasons: Miss Piggy and Cole Escola.
Firstly, Miss Piggy. You’re here at ToughPigs, you know who Miss Piggy is. She’s on top of our website!
If any Muppet can handle a solo project, it’s Miss Piggy. During the heyday of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy was unquestionably the breakout star, and for years after there were Miss Piggy calendars and solo books and even some Piggy-focused TV specials. Not all of those were great, of course, but there was unquestionably a market for Miss Piggy-led material and the Muppet team recognized that possibility.
Unlike a lot of the other Muppets, who exist to facilitate single jokes, Miss Piggy is an incredibly deep and well-rounded character. The thing that makes Piggy so different from the other Muppets is how much thought Frank Oz put into her history, present, and future whenever he performed her. Oz has said so much about the nuances of Piggy. As cited in Muppets from Space: The Making of Movie Magic, Oz said “What makes Piggy tick is her multi-layered neuroses. She is a single pig, she can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t act, she can’t tell jokes, but she has wonderful bravado. These things also cause her pain, which she covers, and that is the heart of her comedy, the covering up of her pain.” Isn’t that such a wonderfully intricate character? She’s beautifully complex, a mess of neuroses no one ever sees because of how constructed and performative her personality is.
As Danny Horn and I discussed on his podcast The Fabulous Miss Piggy Podcast, Piggy encourages everyone around her to say “yes, and” and go along with the very act that is her entire existence. Miss Piggy is the concept of the Muppets writ large, in a way that no other Muppet on their own can be. We all know the Muppets are fake, but we believe in them whenever they appear on our screens. Likewise, we all consciously know that Piggy can’t sing, can’t dance, is a pig puppet performed by a man. But when Miss Piggy tells us she’s a star, we want to believe her. At her best, we want to be on Piggy’s side, no matter what she’s doing. That’s such a compelling hook for a character, and we think audiences have grown to overlook it in recent years.
Eli reminded me that recent Miss Piggy is often a more straightforward, mean-spirited parody of women. For instance, think about the Lifesty(le) segments on Muppets Now. She’s bad at being a glamorous woman, and that makes her mad, and we laugh at her frustrations. We’re laughing at the difficulties people can have with being a woman. But speaking for Eli and me, we don’t want to laugh at Miss Piggy. We want to laugh with her. We want to believe that a pig can be the best actress in the world, even if she isn’t. We want to be encouraged to suspend our disbelief about Miss Piggy, rather than hate her. A movie could get other people back on board with that premise, no matter what story it tells, and we think that absolutely should be its goal.
It all depends on if the movie is well-written and the writer understands Miss Piggy deeply. Which takes me to the second thing I’m excited about: Cole Escola.
For those who don’t know Escola (for example, many cisgender people), they’re a nonbinary actor and writer best known for Broadway’s recent comedy Oh, Mary!. Oh, Mary! is a dark comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln in the days before Lincoln’s assassination. However, Mary is contextualized as frustrated former cabaret star who longs to break free of Abe’s shadow and relive her glory. Escola originated the role of Mary as a campy, drag performance. In their personal life, they’ve also been known to play with gender presentation in interesting and creative ways.
Now listen, I have not seen Oh, Mary!. But I do know this: anyone who does drag, or really has experimented with gender in any way, already understands Miss Piggy on a deep level. Because here’s the thing: Miss Piggy is a drag character, unquestionably.
So let’s focus on drag for now, because drag is different from being transgender. I’m a trans woman, which means I do pretty normal woman things like “go to work” and “vacuum the house” and “podcast extensively about forgotten 1970s Muppet Rodeo Rosie.” Drag is different. While transgender people can (and often do!) perform drag, it’s different. Drag is heightened. Drag is an exaggerated form of femininity, a knowing parody of womanhood (or manhood, if you’re performing as a drag king rather than a drag queen!). Obviously, we usually associate drag with performing as a different gender than one is, but that’s not even necessary. It’s about that dissection and comedic application of what gender means.
The thing about drag queens is they invite the same kind of “being in on the joke” that Piggy does. They’re obviously ludicrous–that’s the point of the performance! But when you’re watching the queen perform, the point is that they bring you into the fold. They make you believe you are seeing the most beautiful, charming woman who exists, because it’s more fun to believe that. And that’s what I want from Piggy, right? That’s how Piggy was around guest stars on The Muppet Show, right?
As Eli stressed to me yesterday, drag queens are not “making fun of women.” It’s a loving exaggeration of femininity, not a targeted attack. The loving exaggeration of gender is, as Eli says “the MSG in the Miss Piggy Sauce.” (And listen, my spouse loves MSG.)
Eli added that when Miss Piggy is conceptualized through the lens of drag, her existence becomes funnier. They said, “Like, Miss Piggy is obviously supposed to be a cartoon character like the rest of the Muppets are. And again, when you remove [drag], she’s just The Girl Puppet, which is antithetical to what she used to be.”
“We all perform gender,” Eli texted me, referencing a common term in queer circles referring to the way all people construct the way others perceive them. “But Piggy is physically performing it. It would be nice to have a writer who understands that Miss Piggy is performing gender the way Gonzo performs whatever dumb s*** he’s doing re: cannons.”
So as far as Eli and I are concerned, this movie feels like it could be the perfect way to inject energy and passion back into the Miss Piggy character. Obviously, our lens is very linked to gender and drag, since that’s how we navigate our world so deeply. But I’d like to think everyone can see that loving exaggeration is different from mean-spirited parody, and we need those vibes back with Miss Piggy.
Escola has walked that line before. As mentioned, in Oh, Mary!, Mary Todd is a frustrated woman who is often selfish and hard to love. But Escola made audiences and critics alike fall in love with Mary and with themselves. Miss Piggy has always been selfish and, pun intended, pig-headed. But there was a time when audiences loved her and rooted for her anyway. That’s what the Muppets need back, and Eli and I think Cole Escola is a great choice to bring us there.
But what do you think? Let us know on social media or on the ToughPigs Discord!
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by Becca Petunia
