There is a certain emotional release that comes when finally realizing a dream, especially one that reaches all the way back to childhood. All those decades of imagining turned to years plotting and working, all reaching a culmination -- it's so often enough to make one cry. In Jason Segel's case, the apex was hit with a few quick words from a frog, and how emotional it was indeed.
Segal, a lifelong Muppet fan, spent years writing a script for the revival of the beloved Jim Henson franchise, and as it came to fruition, the "How I Met Your Mother" star had a moment in which he just couldn't keep himself composed.
"I cried the first time Kermit said a line I'd written," Segel said in an interview with HitFix.com. "I'd been writing the script for about four years, literally since '[Forgetting] Sarah Marshall.' We did a table reading, and they'd brought the puppets for the first time. We're all just sitting at the table, and all of a sudden they brought out Kermit and he said the first line that I had written. And I just lost my shit a little bit. I started crying at the table read and I had to awkwardly ask them to stop filming. It was emotional. He's been my favorite since I was a little kid."
Segel has long talked about his emotional connection to the franchise and its characters, and spoke in June with Collider about how his script was shaped by the longtime voices and operators of the iconic puppets.
"I mean these guys know the characters so much better than I could ever hope to. I can imagine what I think the character might say, but these guys have been playing them for 10, sometimes 20, 30 years," he told the website. "I wish you guys were over there so you could see how a kid reacts to those puppets. It's one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen. The puppeteer just instantly disappears. You watch a child... you can see the guy standing there with a puppet on his hand and he's talking, and the kid is looking directly at the puppet. Every time it happens it reminds me of why I wanted to do the movie. It's a truly beautiful thing."
Here's the official synopsis:
On vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, and his friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) from Smalltown, USA, discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets' former stomping grounds. To stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and raise the $10 million needed to save the theater, Walter, Mary and Gary help Kermit reunite the Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways: Fozzie now performs with a Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets, Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, Animal is in a Santa Barbara clinic for anger management, and Gonzo is a high-powered plumbing magnate. With secret, signature, celebrity cameos, "The Muppets" hits the big screen Nov. 23, 2011.