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Kermit the Frog’s New Voice Actor Makes His Muppets Debut

In the fall of 2016, Steve Whitmire was fired from the role of Kermit the Frog by Muppet Studios, for a variety of (mostly boring) reasons, like refusing to have a Kermit understudy. This news wasn’t announced to the public until July of this year, when they announced that Matt Vogel has taken over the role. And now, we finally have our first performance of Vogel as the most iconic Muppet of all, on the Muppet YouTube Channel’s “Muppet Thought of the Week,” which you can listen to down below:

For many of us who grew up on re-runs of The Muppet Show and VHS copies of The Muppet Movie,  creator Jim Henson will always be THE voice of Kermit the Frog, and everyone else is “the other guy.” Nevertheless, for the past twenty-five years or more, the voice of the beloved amphibian was Steve Whitmire, who was a veteran Muppet performer before inheriting the role of the green guy after Henson’s death.

All in all, Vogel sounds pretty close to what you would expect Kermit to sound like, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was still Steve Whitmire doing the voice. Of course, neither Vogel nor Whitmire ever sounded enough like Jim Henson to me to be completely pitch perfect, but Jim Henson was a tough act to follow, so I’ll cut both voice actors some slack.

Of course, the true test of any Kermit is that first time he sings “The Rainbow Connection.” We eagerly await that performance.

What do you think of the new Kermit voice? Is it jarring, or can you even tell the difference? Be sure to let us know your thoughts down below in the comments.

Images: Muppet Studios

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