Perhaps many of our readers have not enjoyed the television adventures that the well-known puppets offered us at the time. Among these “rag and cardboard” characters was the world-famous little pig. peggy. She, along with other famous TV dolls, starred in the 1981 film “The Great Muppet Caper.” A film that the production company ended up presenting in our country under the title “The big blow of the Muppets”.
Peggy and her role in the movie
I have to admit that to date I have not enjoyed the 97 minutes that it lasts “The big blow of the Muppets”. The plot revolves around a jewelry theft in an art gallery and, from this, a fun plot develops where Peggy becomes one of the protagonists of it.
To do this, she takes on the role of an aspiring model who has just been hired as a receptionist by Lady Holiday. However, after meeting her brother, Nicky, who is actually the jewel thief, she ends up being framed and subsequently imprisoned for a crime she did not commit.
Peggy demonstrating how to ride a 2T at “full speed”
Perhaps one of the most curious and iconic scenes in the entire film, the same one that has brought us to these lines, is when Peggy takes the controls of a Suzuki TS250known colloquially as Savage. The model was considered at the time by the specialized magazine Cycle World as “the best dual-purpose Japanese road and trail 250 ever tested by CW”as the Ride Apart colleagues argue.
As you all imagine, it is not Peggy who actually records the action sequences at the controls of the Savage. Behind the costume that emulates the well-known television pig is the inimitable Kiran Shah. The well-known Kenyan actor and stuntman of Indian descent was 25 years old at the time. For those who do not know it, something that we deeply doubt, to say that it only measures 1.26 metershence he was the ideal person to impersonate a television puppet in the dubbing scenes.
Apparently Shah began working as Peggy’s stunt double a few years earlier, although in parallel he participated in other legendary productions of the time. On the other hand, from IMDB they point out that we are facing “the shortest professional stuntman in the world”. This physical quality has helped him be part of the cast of cult films such as Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
He was also included in some of the sequels to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. More recently he has shared the screen with other actors in the series Andor. Regarding the sequence where he plays Peggy driving the Suzuki TS250, he commented in an interview: “At that time I was working on The Dark Crystal, in pre-production. “We were rehearsing scenes, different characters and so on.”
“I ended up playing quite a few characters in that movie. One day, Jim (Henson) and Frank (Oz) came up to me and said, ‘We’d like you to be Peggy’s double,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it.'”. Regarding the recording process of that scene, he ends by explaining: “While the stunt was being performed, they had to cut one eye out of his head on one side, on the blind side of the camera, so he could see while driving.”
