Gwen Hollander Talks Puppetry and the Honesty of Showtime’s ‘Kidding’ [Exclusive Interview]

Actress Gwen Hollander often has a unique view of the action when she’s working on the hit Showtime series, Kidding. It’s through the mesh screen of the nose on her space otter puppet suit.

Kidding is centered on the life of Jeff Piccirillo (Jim Carrey), the host of the popular children’s television show Mr. Pickles’ Puppet Time. On the series, Hollander plays the role of Sheryl, a puppeteer who brings life to the character of Astronotter.

I recently had the chance to chat with Hollander about her role on Kidding and why the show’s message is so important. And of course, we talked quite a bit about puppets as well.

It was Hollander’s prior experience with puppets in a production of Avenue Q that led her to be involved with the show. “I auditioned for a different role, but I came in with my puppet and everything,” Hollander recalled. “I ended up working with a couple of friends, who are also in the puppet world, which is awesome.”

The training she’d received because of Avenue Q turned out to be invaluable. “They make you go through what they call puppet camp,” Hollander explained. “It’s like a crash course in puppetry, which is impossible because puppetry is an incredibly complicated art. But they get you comfortable enough so that you can at least, as you go through the rehearsal process, start to be able to communicate through the puppet. So that was what I went in with — a hand puppet, because that’s the style of puppetry that Avenue Q uses. But I ended up being in a full-body puppet suit, which is not something I’ve ever done before.”

The full-body puppet suit Hollander wears on Kidding naturally took some time to get used to. 

“It’s difficult physically, just because I am a small person and it is a very heavy suit. So it was just getting used to maneuvering in it, and getting used to communicating with people in it because I am in a head, and I also have an astronaut helmet over it. There is also a fan in the helmet in order to keep the helmet from fogging up, so we realized early on that I couldn’t hear anybody, and I also couldn’t talk to anybody,” Hollander said.

“But we figured it out, and we figured it out on the first day. There was just a process of figuring out hand signals and how to communicate with people, and if people needed to talk to me, they kind of had to talk to the back of my neck.”

Hollander described that entire experience as surreal. “It’s so appropriate for this show, I think, because the show is so kind of magical and surreal. So I’m like, ‘Well, here’s another day where I put on a space otter costume and I look at Jim Carrey through the mesh screen of my otter nose.'”

Hollander said one of her favorite things about working on Kidding is the people.

“It’s an incredible group. The puppeteers, obviously the cast is amazing, and Jim is amazing to watch. And Catherine [Keener] is amazing to watch, which is mostly who my stuff was with. Like I said, I’m in this suit a lot of the time, and I said once, ‘I think that’s going to be like a chapter in my memoir, looking through the mesh of my nose.’ Watching Jim Carrey be brilliant. That was just amazing, to just be present for all of that.”

Hollander also gushed about working with the puppeteers on the series, including Jim Henson puppeteers and a puppeteer who was in the early Star Wars films.

“The puppeteers were also just so skilled, and so funny,” she said. “It was also really fun to watch the actors who hadn’t had experience with puppets interact with [them]. Catherine would just talk to the puppets. She’d come in and say, “Oh, good morning, Ennui” to the puppet. It’s amazing. They really do become very real. It was very sweet.”

If you watched the first season of Kidding, you’re already familiar with its unique, magical style. 

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done, and I think unlike anything anyone’s ever seen. I mean, it’s so beautiful. I still am having these moments when I see the new trailer for Season 2 and I’m amazed that I am even peripherally in any way involved with this show.”

While Hollander wasn’t able to give too much away, she did offer a few teasers for Kidding Season 2. 

“[When] people watch Season 2, they will see some really crazy things,” she hinted. “There are just amazing moments that you’re like, ‘Well, when did I ever think I would shoot this or see this?'”

“I can say it picks up exactly where the last season left off, so no time has passed, and I can say some of the guest stars that I know have already been announced. I know they’ve already announced Ariana Grande. She’s in one of the episodes,” Hollander continued. “That was a surreal day, also. That was the day when it was just a bunch of puppets, Jim, Catherine Keener, and Ariana Grande. That’s a cool day.”

“And Mae Whitman, and Eric Roberts, and some other really exciting guest stars,” she added. “It’s really just figuring out where [Jeff] goes next now that the show is off the air, and basically he finds a kind of unconventional way of still reaching his audience.”

On Kidding, Jeff is struggling to deal with the death of a child, and as he does, he realizes he wants to be able to discuss death on his children’s show. But that idea is highly controversial. Hollander spoke about the show’s themes and the importance of being honest with children about dark subject matter.

“I think people are so surprised by the juxtaposition of children’s television and this really dark subject matter, and I think it’s so important to find a way to communicate this kind of stuff to children. That’s what I thought was so beautiful in Season 1 where he really wants to have a show about death, and they’re like, ‘Well, we can’t do that. This is a show for kids, and they’ll cry.’ But kids are actually able to process so much more than anybody realizes, and this kind of children’s television is actually this really amazing way to communicate with them on a level that they understand and in a way that isn’t scary to them. So I think this marriage of really dark subject material, and puppets, and music is genius.”

“I was saying to someone recently, that on Sesame Street, they just introduced a character, or are in the process of introducing a character, a puppet whose mother is in rehab for opioid addiction,” she continued. “People say, ‘Oh, that’s too dark for children.’ I’m like, ‘No, that’s exactly what you need to do for children, because there are children going through that.’ [It’s] a wonderful way to make those children feel like they’re not alone.”

In addition to Kidding, you can also see Gwen Hollander on the short film Marriage Material. “It’s a musical film, a musical short that I did. It was just released Searchlight Shorts,” Hollander said.

“I play the lead in that, and it’s about a girl who is kind of at a dead-end in relationships. She’s had a bunch of failed relationships, she proposes to her boyfriend, and he says no. So she goes to this weirdly Stepford wifey place that’s like a school — a training school for brides. They call it the school for late-blooming brides so that you can learn to be marriage material,” she explained. “This director, Oran Zegman, is brilliant and is going to explode. The cinematography is amazing. It was a really cool experience.”

“It also was, for the most part, an all-female cast, a largely female crew,” she added. “It hit harder than any of us realized just in the world of feminism, I think. We weren’t even thinking of it. [It’s] an important message, and it is a little bit bleak. But also very funny. It’s a very, very dark comedy. So, like Kidding.”

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Kidding returns Sunday, February 9th at 10/9c on Showtime. 

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