PLUME: The Muppet Show did have a way of getting a whole lot of people to appear that you wouldn’t expect to go on a show like that…

NELSON: This is true. The wonderful part about that, too, was that they got people like Gilda, and people like Wally Bogue - who nobody ever heard of, but Jim loved. Wally worked that show for years in Disneyland, and nobody knew him. I remember the first time I went to Disneyland, I went with Jim. Jim took me there. He said, “You’ve got to see this guy!” He was so excited about seeing Wally Bogue. Wally made me laugh the whole time I was there, and it was great having him on the show. Same with Senor Wences. A guy who had sort-of a heyday in Ed Sullivan times, but a lot of young people wouldn’t have known who he was. These performers who were like this, Jim loved them. He wanted other people to see these people.

PLUME: Like a showcase vehicle.

NELSON: It was indeed. When Senor Wences came for our read-through that we had on Sundays, he did his show for all of us. We were all like little kids sitting there watching him it. It was so wonderful.

NELSON: Never. Jim may have, because certainly Jim did more shows than I did. I didn’t do all of those shows. You know who I did encounter there, as an addendum since he died recently, was Flip Wilson. Either the first or second time I did the Ed Sullivan Show, I see this guy, and he’s pacing back and forth. You can tell he’s nervous, so I said, “What’s up, man?” He said, “Aw, I’m a standby comic.” “What’s that mean?” He said, “Well, if they have time or someone gets sick or something happens, then I get to go on.” I said, “Oh wow, man…” He said, “Yeah, it’s a drag.” As it turned out, he did not get to go on that night. He did eventually make appearances.

PLUME: And when he got his own show, he provided a showcase to the Muppets in the early ’70’s…

NELSON: Yeah. He was a great performer and a funny guy. I remember him very fondly.

PLUME: Did you ever do any of the Flip Wilson appearances?

NELSON: I don’t think so. I don’t think I had any characters then. I may have had Herry Monster fairly early on, because they thought, “Well, you don’t have a monster. Let’s give you a monster.” I think that’s one of the first characters I did, other than Herbert Birdsfoot.

PLUME: And Richard joined the show in ‘72, right?

NELSON: I believe so, but I’m not positive about that. He would come in once in awhile and do things. In the early days, occasionally they would need someone else, and even Jane would come in and do a right hand. Fran Brill was there for a little while, and then she decided she wanted to pursue her acting career, which she did. Then she rejoined the company again.

PLUME: Jumping ahead a bit, and back to what sidetracked chronology we’ve been following, what are your thoughts on Fraggle Rock?

NELSON: That was the first time Jim really kind-of walked away, although he participated, especially at the beginning, it was the first time he left it basically to others. I think he knew by then that everyone had the same concerns as him that the work was quality work.

PLUME: Was there an audition process for the characters, or did he approach you and say, “I want you to perform Gobo?”

NELSON: I think we all auditioned for those characters. I think when I read it, I said I’d rather do Boober, and Jim said, “No, I want you to do Gobo because he’s the one that holds everyone together.”

PLUME: Fraggle Rock strikes me as a show that stands up well to the test of time, even more so than The Muppet Show.

NELSON: I think it definitely does. It’s about relationships. It’s not always as funny as The Muppet Show, even though there are a lot of funny moments.

PLUME: It also strikes me as a more musical series than even Sesame Street…

NELSON: Oh definitely. I think so too. That’s another amazing thing… Dennis Lee and Phil Balsam as a team. Just the amount of work they did…

PLUME: And the range…

NELSON: It’s so vast. I remember Phil telling me, “Oh, I write five songs a day. A lot of them are terrible, but I sit down and write five songs a day. Sometimes one of ‘em is real good.” That’s the kind of dedication and determination all of the crew and everybody had. Focus is probably the key word that comes into play with everything that anybody endeavors to do in life. Fraggle Rock, I think, was the culmination of team effort in terms of putting it together. All of us think it would be so great if we could find another project like that.

PLUME: What do you see as the strong points of the show?

NELSON: Everything. The story. The overall scope and concept of the show. The interrelationship of the characters.

PLUME: It was a very self-contained world…

NELSON: And yet, in the last show, where they meet Doc and Sprocket, it’s such a joyful moment…

PLUME: And poignant…

NELSON: Yeah. We all cried when we watched it, and we probably cried when we did it. It was a very moving thing, for a lot of reasons. It was real in some ways… A very final thing, yet it was the hope of a beginning.

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