Eric Jacobson (July 25, 1970, Fort Worth, Texas, USA) 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.
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.
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!.
Jacobson performed Harry the Duck and other characters on Bear in the Big Blue House.
Outside of Henson, Jacobson has worked on The Puzzle Place, Jack's Big Music Show, and Disney's The Book of Pooh (plus a TV show called Once Upon a Tree, in which he performed Billy the Bobcat). He also has performed on stage performing live puppet theater in New York City with The Puppet Company, The Cosmic Bicycle Theater, and The Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park.
Jacobson has been honored for his work on several occasions and holds the distinction of being the first puppeteer to work on multiple film and television productions cited for excellence by UNIMA in the same year.
In 2013, Jacobson served as puppeteer for Shaggy Rogers (with Matthew Lillard serving as Shaggy's voice) for the DVD movie, Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map.
Jacobson performed Grover during appearances on Good Morning Australia, Rove Live, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.[citation needed] He performed Fozzie Bear during appearances on Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and @midnight. Jacobson performed Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal for an appearance on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Jacobson performed Bert for an appearance in episode 22 of Between the Lions' season 2, "Tweet! Tweet!".
