Exclusive: Puppeteers Peter Linz and Noel MacNeal Discuss The Return Of Bear in the Big Blue House

Bear in the Big Blue House debuted on Disney+ this past October, much to fans’ enthusiasm. As a fan of the show when we were younger, BeautifulBallad had the amazing opportunity to chat with puppeteers Peter Linz, Puppeteer for Tutter, and Pip, and Noel MacNeal, puppeteer for Bear, about the return of their beloved show.

How does it fell to be on a show that has transcended generations:
MacNeal : “For me, it’s a lesson in never say never, because I never thought it would be back. And the fact that he is not only resonating with the original kids, but those kids now have kids of their own who are watching it and they’re posting about their kids’ reactions and how they just absolutely love the show. And even parents who are now grandparents are now saying, ‘It’s so great that this show that I shared with my son or daughter, I can now share with my grandson and granddaughter’. So it’s remarkable and humbling and just gratifying.”

Linz: “Hugely gratifying. Noel and myself and Vicki and Tyler and Jim Cooper, were all so incredibly lucky to get to be connected with such a well crafted series for preschoolers and to have our original audience. It’s very rare that to people in our position actually get to share the same remarkable series with a whole new generation. It’s very exciting and gratifying and loving seeing all the little videos of parents, who were kids when we first did the show, showing it to their children. That’s so much fun. And seeing little kids react in the same way as I remember my own children reacting and my daughters grew up with the show. They were like one, I think during season one and some of their reactions to seeing Bear, is the same as I’m seeing with young little kids today.”

On TikTok helping to reach a new audience:
MacNeal : “Apparently dogs like watching the show too. So people have posted their dogs watching it.

On what draws audiences to the show:
Linz: “The themes of the show are universal. There’s things, the series may be 25 years old, but the themes that it covers for young children are still the same little kids face today. There are still birthday parties, kids still have fears of lightning or bugs. They still have to learn how to go to the potty. These things are universal and the show, it’s such a credit to the writers of the series that it was so well written and crafted that it holds up. The other thing is that we never really bought into the pop culture of the day so much with this series, it’s dare I say, timeless. And the themes still apply. And I think, Noel, you had said something we were talking before about it’s soothing. There’s nothing threatening about these characters.”

MacNeal : “Yeah, it’s just starting with the design of the puppets, they’re just so beautifully, but simply designed that a kid can just relate to watching these characters that aren’t overly complicated. So it’s a credit to Peter and Tyler and all the puppeteers who had, I mean, I had an eye blink, but other people didn’t. So it’s just a credit that you guys were able to actually make so much from these simple little puppets, which is wonderful.

On constantly being touched by viewers:
MacNeal : “It’s such a genuine, sincere, soothing show that when I was getting fan mail for years from parents of kids with autism and special needs and how much they appreciated Bear then. And they would still have their DVDs or they would find an episode on YouTube or they’re patched together VHS tape. So now that it’s back on, they are so grateful to have this back in their lives. And then a whole new generation of kids, autism special needs, who now can also appreciate just the genuine sincerity of this show.”

On a show that had a lasting impact on them as children:
MacNeal : “I’m going limit just because of my and Peter’s connection. That little show called Sesame Street is one.

Linz: “Noel and I were target audience when Sesame first came out, actually 53 years ago today as we’re doing this interview. I have no memory of not being interested in puppets my whole life. And Sesame Street in particular and the Muppet Show are responsible for what I do now. This is the only I know, since I was a very young child, I wanted to be a puppeteer with the Muppets and on Sesame Street and TV and movies. I’ve gotten incredibly lucky. And that’s what I do now. The other thing that helps is that I have absolutely no marketable skills whatsoever, other than what I do. So I’m really fortunate I get to do this.”

On fellow puppeteers inspiring their dreams of puppeteering:
MacNeal : “And this real house of very limited ability. If it’s big and sweaty and hot, I’m your guy. But growing up, there was one before Sesame. I remember watching a show called Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Those were just old fashioned puppets in a proscenium with the kind that you put your hand in, little finger in the neck and your two fingers would be the hands. And then Ollie was the kind you would put your hand in and open and close the mouth. And when it came to Ollie and lip sync, show creator and puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom, could not lip sync to save his life. He wouldn’t be hired today. But this man was a master of characterization. His characters were so distinct, his voices were so clear. You knew exactly who was talking. And the only other person who I knew, who could do that just as well, if not better, was Jerry Nelson, who I got to meet and work with on Sesame Street. And Jerry was just a master of vocalization and character. So those were influences on me. And then when I saw Sesame Street, it was like puppets I’d never seen before. Especially Big Bird, a puppet that could actually walk around and not be hidden behind anything. So from there it went to the Muppet Show and it was like, well this guy Jim [Henson], and these people are making a living, maybe I could.”

On that moment they realized this is what they wanted to do as a career:
Linz: “I relate it to playing a musical instrument. Noel and I both do a lot of teaching of television puppetry. And it really is playing a musical instrument. And you have to be able to play jazz if you want to do it professionally. You really just have to riff. For me, as a kid of the 70s, I watched a lot of TV, a lot of sitcoms and cartoons. And most of the dads in these cartoons and sitcoms hated their jobs, it was a point of comedy and conflict between I got to go to work. And the overriding the boss who was just horrible. And as a little kid it just got me thinking when I’m a grownup, if I go to work, I want to do something that I like to do. I don’t want to go, I got to go to the old grind. And so they got me thinking and I was about eight years old and I was like, well that for me, that’s puppetry. I’ll go and be a puppeteer on Sesame Street. That’ll do it. That was it.”

MacNeal : “For me it was, I always loved Sesame Street and then The Muppets and I was trying to think, well maybe I could do it. And so I did research the old fashioned way. I went to the library, which is like Barnes and Noble, but it’s free, because there was no internet back then. And I found two colleges and I presented this to my mom. And my mom was a single mom who was raising me and holding out two jobs to send me to private school, because I grew up in Central Harlem. So I’m presenting to this woman, ‘Okay, I know what I want to be, a puppeteer’, and I just braced myself. And she said, ‘Okay, what do we have to do?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, well this college needs this, this college needs that’. And she said, ‘Okay, what do we have to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, this is due then, this is due then’. And she repeated. ‘Okay, what do we have to?’ And that’s all she kept saying, because she said to me, ‘Noel, I’ve been typing the same kind of letters for 30 years. You can always get a job. Don’t get a job, get a career’. And so that’s what I did. So then it was having that kind of backing from the get go, to go after your dream, really helps.”

On what they are working on currently:
Linz: “The Muppets Mayhem coming to Disney plus sometime next year. That focuses on just the Muppet House and Dr. Teeth, Animal, Floyd, Janice, Zoot, and Lips, the Electric Band, making their first studio album in 50 years. And we have a spectacular human, I was talking about good writing. I’m so excited for people to see this. Anyway, I’ve been working on that. It’s in post production. Now another series I work on, on PBS, is Donkey Hodie. I play Clyde the Cloud and we’re gearing up to start shooting season 54 of Sesame Street, where I play Harry Monster and Ernie.”

Noel: “And with season 54 starting, not only do I occasionally puppeteer on Sesame, but now I’m actually one of the directors for the season.”

On how directing became a possibility on Sesame Street:
MacNeal : “I started out on Sesame as the Wrangler, the person who takes care of the puppets. And so I would take Big Bird on and off of my mentor, Carol Spinney. And then I transitioned into assisting puppeteering stuff and now I’m a director for the series, which is truly gratifying. So last week when it premiered, I just freeze framed the credit, only the directors’ list. And so blatantly just posted it on social media.”

On how directing an episode of Bear in the Big Blue House prepared him for Sesame Street:
MacNeal : “I directed an episode of Bear, called “Volunteers at Woodland Valley”. And in a way, we all kind of direct ourselves being volunteers for TV. So we always adjust and make sure the composition of the shot works. And so that’s when I just asked, could I direct an episode? And it was especially well written episode where Bear was not in 99.9% of the scenes. So he hurts his foot, he has to stay home. And so his little friends go out for him. And it was so great directing and being able to compose the shots and using elements of green screen and blue screen and it was wonderful. And now with Sesame, there’s something truly gratifying about the fact that I started off wrangling. And so my knowledge of how the puppets should be set up and how they should look, of puppeteering the puppets and how everybody has to get into place.”

On how past directors inspired his own directing style:
MacNeal : “Working with extraordinary directors over the years, especially on Sesame, like John Stone, who is the third person. People think of Joan Morris and Jim Henson? No, the third person was John Stone, who was such an integral part of the Sesame that we all grew up with. And another director there was Lisa Simon. And so kind a kindred spirit, because Lisa started out as the child wrangler who would take care of the kids. And she worked her way up and then she became a director and she was one of the best directors, not even for Sesame, but I had her come to direct Bear and she was wonderful. She’s like one of the loveliest ladies. And we also worked with her on Between The Lions, which was the other show Peter and I worked on together. So it was great. So yeah, you never know what you want until you’re given the opportunity. Because the other thing my mom said was ‘Well they’ll either say yes or they’ll say no.'”

On what draws people back to Sesame Street:
Linz: “It’s so fun. I think that’s the thing and the reason Noel and I got into this in the first place on top of everything else. The thing about making a difference in people’s lives and being a positive influence is kind of that fringe benefit. I mean, selfishly I got into it, because it’s fun. How lucky are we? We get to play with dolls for a living. And I take a lot of joy in my work. I really do. It is play.”

MacNeal : “Puppetry is pretty much predominantly for kids. But you are interacting and touching the life of such a young life and it’s your responsibility to make that impression as positive as possible. And that’s what we do on shows like Sesame and then with Bear, the fact that the kids that originally grew up with Bear are now grown up and still have that same little magic inside or have reignited that same little joy that they felt when they were kids and now introducing their kids to bear or just watching it themselves. More people have texted me, tweeted me saying, ‘I’m 32, I don’t have a kid, I’m watching Bear in the Big Blue House right now before bed.’ It’s the fact that you can have that sort of impact on somebody’s entire life, is magical.”

On whether there is a character that they would love to puppeteer:
Linz: “The thing is that I didn’t get into puppeteering to perform other people’s characters. I feel a huge responsibility when I do take over. Ernie, for example, that was Jim Henson’s character or with the Muppets, any number of those characters. It’s a huge responsibility. It’s a huge honor and responsibility to be the custodian of those classic characters. But the whole reason I got into puppetry, it was about performing my own characters or characters that came from me. So there’s not really any character out there that I would like to perform. I would like to keep discovering and creating new characters. And I’ve kind of done that with Lips, who’s the trumpet player in the Electric Mayhem. When the Muppets Mayhem comes out next spring on Disney Plus, Lips is actually a puppet. It’s a puppet that’s been around since the Muppet Show days, since the 70s. But he’s always been kind of silent. I think there was a few years back where he talked a little bit, but his character was never fully developed. And I actually had an opportunity with this new series to recreate Lips with a whole very definite personality, very definite character.”

MacNeal : “For me too. It was when I get those fan emails about kids with autism and special needs resonating with Bear, inspired me to try and create my own show for them. So I have a YouTube channel which has videos, it’s called The Show Me Show. And I’m developing it and pitching it and hopefully it’ll become a series not too far in the future. But those would be original characters. And I mean it’d be very similar to Bear, where anyone could watch it, but kids with of autism and special needs would also greatly benefit from it.”

On what they hope viewers take away from the show:
MacNeal : “I did a blatant promotion for the show, because I’m so proud of this series and what we were able to do and the fact that so many people are truly loving the fact that it’s back and introducing it. So I went on TikTok and I said that, thank you, because it was trending, it’s on Disney Plus, it’s trending. I said, thank you so much. And then I said, now Disney notices things like this. For example, if they like it on Disney Plus, maybe they’d like it in the parks. And I asked, would you like to see Bear and his friends back in the parks? And people a bit overwhelmingly saying yes. And I said, another thing Disney Plus notices when things trend like, oh, if they like this, maybe they would like some new content like shorts or an original Disney Plus movie. I said, would you like to see a Disney Plus original movie, starring Bear and his friends? And people have just been responding to that. That and merchandise. People want merchandise again, because having their kids, they remember having a bear like hugging it or holding Tutter for bedtime and it’s now they want to share that with their kids. So the fact that it’s the same enthusiasm and love that this show had, is now coming back again with this whole new generation from the original generation, is just beautiful.”

Linz: “It’s absolutely mind blowing. And I hope that that kids today discovering it for the first time, get the same sense of joy and comfort and love that come from the series as their parents did.”

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity