You know the Muppets, but you’re about to get to know the Muppets’ Electric Mayhem Band. Tahj Mowry stars alongside Lilly Singh, Anders Holm, and Saara Chaudry in Disney+‘s The Muppets Mayhem, premiering in full on May 10, and the Smart Guy alum shared what it was like to work with the world’s most famous puppets to TV Insider.
Electric Mayhem is making its first album in the comedy series. The band — made up of Dr. Teeth on vocals and keyboards, Animal on drums, Floyd Pepper on vocals and bass, Janice on vocals and lead guitar, Zoot on saxophone, and Lips on trumpet — is a thing of music legend, as the “documentary” footage in the trailer shows. Despite their icon status (as Tommy Lee says in the trailer, “They taught Mötley Crüe how to shred and party”), they’ve never actually released original music… until now.
The comedy series follows Electric Mayhem on an epic musical journey as they face the modern-day music scene. Helping them navigate it all is Nora (Singh), a driven young music executive. Mowry plays Gary “Moog” Moogowski, who joins Nora and the band on their mission to get the album made.
What sets this series apart is that it focuses on a small faction of the Muppets instead of incorporating the entire colorful ensemble. There are many human celebrity cameos across the episodes, but don’t expect to see Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the gang. This series focuses solely on the band.
Mowry tells us he was most excited to meet and work with Animal, with whom he shared his first scene. The shot features Animal “popping down from the rafters in the home, like from the roof. But I’m having a conversation, so I can’t really engage with him. But during the scene, I just wanted to engage with him so bad because I’m like, it’s Animal, right?!”
Shooting with the Muppets, even only six of them makes for a set with a ton of moving parts. “Every shot that involves the Muppets is basically a visual effects shot,” Mowry explains, “so it takes a lot of time to set up. Our sets are built four feet above ground, so if we have to turn around and get another shot of the other person in the scene, you gotta build the set again. You gotta move the floor. It’s crazy. But again, you have Muppets around you, so you can’t ever be unhappy.”
Mowry and Singh each watched all of the Muppet movies in preparation for their roles to “study the human-Muppet interaction because, in any Muppet interaction, it’s very grounded … You have to treat them like they’re real because in this world they are.”
Disney/Mitch Haaseth
That real feeling is part of their “magic” quality, which Mowry compares to the “Disney magic” viewers know well. Disney and Muppets Studios titles just hit different, “and this is Muppet Studios and Disney,” the Kim Possible alum adds, “so you have so much magic.”
The magic even applies when the cameras turn off. “It’s crazy because even me doing a scene with a puppet, they’re not a puppet! To me, this is a real; you know what I mean? It’s a Muppet” Mowry gushes. The puppets would often stay in character between takes just to make everyone laugh. Those moments alone warrants their own comedy series, Mowry teases. And being the great improvisers they are, the directors would have the Muppets, Mowry, and Singh do some riffing on the last takes. “It’ll be a nice blend of improv and scripted.”
So, about this new music. “There’s original music, there’s covers,” he says. “I was blown away every day on set whenever I heard them sing because they all can sing amazingly. And you know they’re funny. They can improv … I think it’s cool to be able to watch a show and then be like, ‘Oh, I like that song. Oh, let me go to the album and save that song.’ You know? It’s bigger than just the show.”
“I think that you’ll get to see that aspect of that human-Muppet interaction on a deeper level in this show than you have in the past” through Electric Mayhem’s members, Mowry shares, adding, “I think that is what makes this show so special because it’s got so much heart.”
Adding to that heart is “comedy, a little bit of action, and a little love triangle,” Mowry teases. And like all Muppets titles, Mowry says Mayhem has something for the whole family while maintaining that signature adult humor.
“There’ll be stuff that only the adults might get,” he notes, adding, “You know, you can’t wrangle ’em. They’re rockstars, so they make a mess sometimes.”
The Muppets Mayhem, Series Premiere, Wednesday, May 10, Disney+