Muppet’s Kermit the Frog to have a new voice

Steve Whitmire has been the voice of Kermit since 1990, after the death of Muppets creator Jim Henson. (AP)

LOS ANGELES: It is not easy being green for Kermit the Frog.
But is it devastating for Steve Whitmire, who was let go after nearly three decades as the voice and puppeteer for The Muppet Show’s beloved green creature.
Whitmire, in a blog post, said he was “devastated to have failed” Muppets founder and mentor Jim Henson.
“For me the Muppets are not just a job, or a career, or even a passion. They are a calling, an urgent, undeniable, impossible to resist way of life,” Whitmire wrote in his blog, a day after his firing was announced. “This is my life’s work since I was 19 years old. I feel that I am at the top of my game, and I want all of you who love the Muppets to know that I would never consider abandoning Kermit.”
Kermit the Frog was Henson’s signature character and the centerpiece of the Muppets franchise from 1955 until Henson’s death in 1990, and Whitmire was chosen by Henson’s son to take over. He also provided the voice of Sesame Street favorite Ernie, of Bert and Ernie fame.
Whitmire wrote in his blog that The Muppets Studio’s executives informed him that Kermit would be recast, and he has “remained silent the last nine months in hopes that the Disney company might reverse their course”.
“I have experienced every possible emotion since October 2016, when I received a phone call from The Muppets Studio’s executives to say they were recasting.”
“Through a new business representative, I have offered multiple remedies to their two stated issues which had never been mentioned to me prior to that phone call. I wish that we could have sat down, looked each other in the eye, and discussed what was on their minds before they took such a drastic action.”
Matt Vogel, who voiced Kermit imitator Constantine in 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted, will first be heard as Kermit — the long-time love of Miss Piggy — in a Muppets Thought of the Week video next week.