Eric Jacobson

Eric Jacobson (born July 25, 1970) is an American puppeteer, best known for performing the Muppet characters Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam the Eagle for Disney's The Muppets Studio, as well as Sesame Street characters Bert and Grover—all roles that he inherited from the characters' original performer, Frank Oz. As of 2015, Jacobson is now Caroll Spinney's understudy for Oscar the Grouch. 2Career Jacobson, a native of Fort Worth, initially started playing Bert and Grover on Sesame Street in 1998, and officially joined the cast of the classic Muppet Show Muppets in 2001. His role expanded on Sesame Street in 2002 to include new Grover segments, particularly Global Grover. However, Oz occasionally came in to Sesame Street to record new material with those characters. In 2001, the same year that he worked on The Book of Pooh, where he worked on Piglet and Kanga, he also began playing Miss Piggy, debuting at the "Muppetfest" convention. Subsequently, in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), he performed the roles of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Animal. In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005), he began performing Sam the Eagle. Jacobson has appeared in numerous other television shows and movies as well. 3Guest appearances Jacobson performed Miss Piggy for appearances on Rove Live, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Tony Danza Show, Good Morning America, This Morning, WWE Raw, Take Two with Phineas and Ferb, Good Luck Charlie, WWE Tribute to the Troops, and also performed Miss Piggy for an appearance in an episode of the Disney Channel Original Series So Random