The Muppets Mayhem is ready to jam in first look at series focused on the Electric Mayhem
A new Muppets television series all about Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Can you picture that?
We can — with our exclusive first look at The Muppets Mayhem, a new series heading to Disney+ this year. It marks the first time the Muppets have embarked on a new television series since 2015's The Muppets, the short-lived mockumentary style series about running a late night show with Miss Piggy as host (though in the meanwhile, they'd debuted Halloween special The Muppets Haunted Mansion and short-form sketch show, Muppets Now).
The Muppets Mayhem veers into new territory for the characters, pivoting its focus from the core characters of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and their ilk to focus on the story of the beloved side characters of the Muppets house band.
Mitch Haaseth/Disney Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem face a tough audience with record executives, along with Nora (Lilly Singh), Moog (Tahj Mowry) and JJ (Anders Holm).
Co-created by Muppets veteran Bill Barretta and college friends Jeff Yorkes and Adam F. Goldberg, who also wrote the screenplay for The Muppets Wizard of Oz, the series seeks to open a new avenue for a relationship between Disney+ and the Muppets. "To us, this is an IP that's as big as Star Wars or Marvel," Goldberg tells EW. "I mean, they have Kermit."
The Muppets Mayhem centers on Nora (Lilly Singh), an aspiring record producer, who with the help of her social media influencer sister, Hannah (Saara Chaudry), and Electric Mayhem super-fan, Gary "Moog" Moogland (Tahj Mowry), embark on helping the band record their first-ever album.
The idea for a series centered on the band began in perhaps an unexpected place when it comes to the Muppets — the Outside Lands music festival. In 2016, The Electric Mayhem played a set there, sparking Bill Barretta to wonder what possibilities the characters might have for further storytelling.
"It was unbelievable," he says. "It was ... one of the most amazing experiences I've had with the Muppets. There was something like 30,000 people that came to the park. I thought, 'Well, there's something there.' What if this band went on the road? What if the band went on tour? And so, I started developing an idea for a show about the band because we don't know that much about them."
Mitch Haaseth/Disney A jam session with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
At the same time, Goldberg and Yorkes had been pondering a show about the band for the last eight years. "Jeff conceived the whole thing," Goldberg says. "He's an editor, so he cut a whole sizzle reel to convince me to get on board. And then that was the sizzle we used to actually sell this thing."
For both of them, it was about going deep on familiar, but largely unknown characters instead of using the panoply of the Muppets world to tell a story. "This is just about the band specifically," Goldberg says. "We don't have that deep bench of characters like when you do The Wizard of Oz or Treasure Island or A Christmas Carol. You could tell this giant story with the hundreds of characters that they have. We're telling a very small story about this band and where they've been and where they're going. It is about the band and not the tone of a variety show."
Adds Yorkes: "We have the freedom to go anywhere with these characters — they're not as well known as the core characters. People recognize them, but we have the freedom to fill out their backstory and do whatever we want."
Because it's all about the music, an art form near and dear to late Muppets creator Jim Henson's heart, audiences can expect a lot of clashing of styles between the new world order of music producing and the '70s jam band vibes of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Though don't start thinking this is Daisy Jones & the Six with Muppets.
Mitch Haaseth/Disney The groovy vibes of a Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem show
"They get along better than Fleetwood Mac," Yorkes says with a laugh. "But they're definitely from a different era. The conceit of the show is bringing this old school band to the modern age and way of making music. That's the comedy of it. They're a group of characters that have no real goals or ambitions. Whatever you want to do, they roll with it. So, when you have a character that's really determined to get them to do something, that's also the comedy of the show. It's Type A wrestling with Type, I would even say, C."
Barretta echoes this notion that the series' main conflict point will come with the band's determination to go with the flow and please everyone. "They want to remain true to themselves, but they don't want to leave anybody out," he explains. "How do you find that balance? That's every musician or artist's struggle — they would love everybody to love them. What's fun about this band is we like to take the creative approach that they can play just about anything. That allows us to dip ourselves into different types of music and be silly and have fun with it."
To that end, the show will boast an epic soundtrack. Goldberg estimates the first half of the ten-episode season is nearly all covers, particularly a lot of classic rock of the era in which the band was first introduced to audiences (they premiered in 1975 as the house band on the pilot of The Muppet Show). But there will also be plenty of original songs too as the band writes their album.
Nora (Lilly Singh) and Animal hang out
With that in mind, the show also promises lots of fun surprise cameos, as is always the case with the Muppets. But don't necessarily expect your favorite Muppet to pop up. "We are telling a regular story in the real world with Muppets," Goldberg says. "So we tried to ground everything and keep it realistic as opposed to all of a sudden there's talking fruit in your fridge."
Barretta notes that sense of balance and grounding is key to what makes the show (and the Muppets at large) work. As we get to know the history of the band and the backstory of the members, we also learn the challenges and dreams of the story's human characters, threading a lot of heart and emotion across the storytelling.
"We've found a real balance," Barreta reflects. "It's not Muppet-heavy and it's not human-heavy, which is a difficult thing to do with the Muppets. You want to keep everybody interested. The Muppets have fun little beats and punchlines and good comedy and sight gags, but the storytelling [is key]. What's really helped is to have some humans who are truly connected and have real conflict with them — conflicts that they experience together and separately and with each other."
The show will also delve into family and the complicated relationship between Nora and Hannah, fraught with the history of Nora's surrogate parenting of Hannah. "Sisterhood is a key ingredient in this show," Chaudry says. "Nora and Hannah go through a lot together. They grow as people, but as sisters as well."
Mitch Haaseth/Disney Nora (Lilly Singh), Janice, and Hannah (Saara Chaudry) have a heart-to-heart.
Another new element to the series is the diversity of the human cast. Traditionally, in a reflection of the industry itself, the Muppets have starred opposite white actors. But The Muppets Mayhem offers audiences a much more colorful world beyond mere shades of felt.
"When I was auditioning for the show, one of the really big reasons I wanted it was because the Muppets are so iconic," Singh says. "Everyone has a memory of seeing the Muppets for the first time. Everyone has a love story with the Muppets. I had never seen myself in those stories. I know other people probably don't see themselves. I really wanted this role so that it could look different."
In just about every way, The Muppets Mayhem won't look like any Muppet story that has come before. And that's pretty darn groovy.
Further details, including premiere date, are still to come.
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