Miss Piggy

Miss Piggy is an anthropomorphic pig puppet and one of the central characters on The Muppet Show who developed from a one-joke running gag into a complex, three-dimensional character.

Biography
Miss Piggy is absolutely convinced that she's destined for stardom, and nothing is going to stand in her way. Her public face tries to be the soul of feminine charm, but she can instantly fly into a violent rage whenever she thinks she's insulted or thwarted. Kermit the Frog has learned this all too well, since he's the usual target for her karate chops. When she isn't sending him flying through the air, she is often smothering him in (mostly unwanted) kisses.

Kermit and Piggy
Throughout the TV show Miss Piggy has repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to get Kermit to marry her. She has tried writing a "comedy sketch" about her and Kermit getting married, getting Scooter to trick Kermit into signing a marriage license and hiring a real minister to portray the minister in the sketch. However, during the skit, before Kermit was to say "I do", he refrained himself and introduced Lew Zealand instead. Eventually in the films, Kermit started returning her affections and (unwittingly) married her in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Piggy behind the scenes


The first draft of the puppet was a blonde, beady-eyed pig who appeared briefly in the 1975 pilot special, The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, in a sketch called "Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs." She was unnamed in that show, but by the time The Muppet Show began in 1976, she was recognizably Miss Piggy -- sporting large blue eyes, wearing a flowing white gown, and jumping on Kermit, the love of her life. The fact that she was intended to be a bit player is reflected in her formulaic name, which was patterned after Miss Mousey, Kermit's love interest in the 1974 special The Muppet Valentine Show.

When the idea for Miss Piggy was originally conceived in the early 1970s, the puppet was called 'Miss Piggy Lee' - a parody of the singer Peggy Lee. Almost immediately, the 'Lee' part of the name was dropped, and by the first season of The Muppet Show in 1976, she was known as Miss Piggy.

Miss Piggy soon developed into a major character, as the Muppet creators recognized that a lovelorn pig could be more than a one-note running gag. Frank Oz has said that while Fozzie Bear is a two-dimensional character, and Animal has no dimensions, Miss Piggy is one of the few Muppets to be fully realized in three dimensions.

Quotes about Miss Piggy

 * "She wants everyone to treat her like a lady, and if they don't, she'll cut them in half." -- Frank Oz in Time Magazine, Dec. 25, 1978


 * "In one rehearsal, I was working as Miss Piggy with Jim, who was doing Kermit, and the script called for her to slap him. Instead of a slap, I gave him a funny karate hit. Suddenly, that hit crystallized her character for me -- the coyness hiding the aggression; the conflict of that love with her desire for a career; her hunger for a glamour image; her tremendous out-and-out ego -- all those things are great fun to explore in a character." -- Frank Oz in The New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1979


 * "Miss Piggy's not aware of the fact that she's overweight -- she dresses as if she's 30 pounds lighter. So she has a lot of fantasy." -- Costume designer Calista Hendrickson in The New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1979

Trivia

 * In 1998, Miss Piggy had her own perfume released titled "Moi."
 * In The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy tells guest star Avery Schreiber that her full name is "Pigathius," which is "From the Greek, meaning 'river of passion'."
 * Though normally called 'Piggy' in the original French version of the show, her name has beome "Peggy" for the 2006 Muppets TV series; "Peggy" has also been used in Spain and Mexico.