Christoph Waltz’s “most unusual” co-stars: “They have everything the actor has except the ego”
Being in a movie alongside the Muppets is a rare honour that is generally reserved for select actors with proven track records, and Christoph Waltz, in turn, was enamoured by his furry co-stars on the set of Muppets Most Wanted.
Unlike most other family films, the entries in The Muppets franchise often find the best-of-the-best to join their casts of puppets; Charles Grodin was at the height of his powers when he played a dastardly thief in The Great Muppet Caper, and Michael Caine was coming off of his first Academy Award win for Hannah and Her Sisters when he gave an oddly moving performance as Scrooge in A Muppet Christmas Carol.
Although every film in the franchise has included a few excellent celebrity cameos, 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted may have them all beat. Kermit’s attempt to lead the Muppets on a world tour ends up introducing the gang to such famous names as Salma Hayek, Tom Hiddleston, James McAvoy, Miranda Richardson, Frank Langella, Hugh Bonneville, Saoirse Ronan, and Toby Jones, among many other stellar names.
A majority of these actors and icons were tasked with playing goofy characters that exist within the broader universe of The Muppets, but Christoph Waltz had the rare honour of getting to play himself. It’s during a performance in Germany that Waltz joins the Muppets to do a waltz with Sweetums, the hairy ogre who towers over the rest of his co-stars, and getting him to appear as such made sense, as he was coming off from being awarded the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar for playing the sinister Nazi Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds and the heroic bounty hunter Dr King Schultz in Django Unchained, both of which were written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Ironically, Tarantino has his own history with the Muppets, as he made a cameo as himself in the made-for-television film The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz.
It might be easy to imagine an actor of Waltz’s calibre would look down at making a brief cameo in a family film, but as it turns out, he was more than willing to revise his schedule in order to pursue the opportunity, telling the BBC, “I only had one day, but I wanted to do it because of the Muppets. They are the most enchanting and unusual colleagues, if I can call them such, that you could possibly imagine.”
Waltz has a fairly impressive track record that includes many star-studded films, but he’s also advocated for professionalism on set, having notoriously disagreed with those who use the method approach. Perhaps, working alongside the Muppets allowed him to feel more comfortable because he wasn’t having to deal with more pretentious co-stars.
“They have everything the actor has except the ego, so the flow in the exchange is completely unobstructed,” he relayed, “It’s really magical to find yourself playing with these puppets, like you would with any other creature you might play with.”
Muppets Most Wanted was unfortunately a disappointment in the series that effectively brought an end to seeing the Muppets on the big screen. That being said, Disney is almost guaranteed to bring them back in some iteration, especially when considering the popularity of The Muppet Show on Disney+. Should a new film go into production soon, it seems like Waltz would be more than happy to reprise work with his “most unusual” co-stars.
