Dame Diana Rigg Taught Me What Sophistication Is in ‘The Great Muppet Caper’

Dame Diana Rigg‘s career was all about showing women off in all their fabulous glory. From her iconic turn as super spy Emma Peel in the original Avengers to her acid-tongued (and Joffrey-poisoning) Olenna Tyrell on Game of Thrones, every one of Rigg’s performances provided an example of all women could be. However, for this writer, Dame Diana Rigg will always be The Great Muppet Caper‘s Lady Holiday. The haughty haute couture designer was — and still is — the most sophisticated woman I’ve ever seen on screen and everything my inner child dreams of being.

The Great Muppet Caper might be the Muppet movie with the most cult cache. As Uproxx’s Brian Grubb wrote in his tribute to the film last week, “Watching it now, it’s kind of incredible it even exists.” The film is a bizarro collection of state-of-the-art puppetry, vaudeville jokes, British humor, and heist movie satire. The film follows twins and reporters Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear as they travel to London along with photographer Gonzo to file a story on a recent high profile jewel heist.

However, instead of interviewing the real victim of the crime, Lady Holiday (the indelible Diana Rigg), Kermit mistakes her new receptionist Miss Piggy for the fashion designer. And they embark on an old Hollywood style rom-com. All the while, there are Muppet musical numbers and a plot being hatched by Lady Holiday’s skeevy American brother, Nicky (Charles Grodin), to steal her biggest prize, “the fabulous baseball diamond.”

The Great Muppet Caper is bonkers and it was *my* Muppet movie as a child.

Besides being one of the only Muppet movies my family had when I was growing up, The Great Muppet Caper was one of the few films that tickled me at every turn. I loved the stupid-clever wordplay of the jokes, the absurd cameos from the likes of Peter Falk and John Cleese, and the Anglophilia of it all. It’s perhaps — along with Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks — the reason I later became such a nerd for British comedy and BBC period dramas. The Great Muppet Caper made England look like the coolest place on Earth. Mainly because Lady Holiday lived there.

Diana Rigg’s Lady Holiday is everything The Devil Wears Prada‘s Miranda Priestly actually wishes she could be. She is a self-made icon who inspired pigs to cross the pond and beg for jobs at her door. She makes models feel like problems with the dresses she designed is their fault. Her one vice seems to be collecting super expensive jewels and that’s only a problem because her miscreant brother keeps stealing them.

While the rest of The Great Muppet Caper revels in its silliness, Lady Holiday never loses her chic edge. That’s because Dame Diana Rigg played her totally straight. While everyone is clowning around her, she is as serene as a lake (except when her jewels are stolen). Her every reaction makes total sense from the POV of this sophisticated fashion titan Rigg has created. In fact, Lady Holiday grounds the rest of The Great Muppet Caper so that everyone else can fly. It’s a brilliant performance and Rigg gives it her all.

Rigg gave this quirky family film her best for a rather sweet and sentimental reason. In a 2015 interview with the AV Club, she explained that she only did the film because her daughter, Tipping the Velvet and Bletchley Circle actress Rachael Stirling, was “passionately in love with Miss Piggy.” (Aren’t we all!?!?)

“[Stirling] was about 5 or 6, and she came to the studio with a couple of friends to meet Miss Piggy, and she burst into tears when she saw Miss Piggy,” Rigg told the AV Club. “I think she was more frightened than anything. Because Miss Piggy was huge. They have several Miss Piggys.”

Rigg also shared that “the people were lovely, Frank Oz and Jim [Henson], absolutely charming, lovely people. And I’d adored the show on the telly. I was a fan.”

She was a fan! And that fandom shows in her performance. Much like Sir Michael Caine’s brilliant performance in The Muppet Christmas Carol, Rigg’s work in The Great Muppet Caper shows tremendous respect for what the Muppets are. Only a Muppet fan could give us the fabulous Lady Holiday and only Lady Holiday could inspire such awe in me that I still think of Rigg as Holiday decades after I first saw the film.

Yes, Diana Rigg was Emma Peel, Mrs. James Bond, Olenna Tyrell, and so much more. But for me, and a slew of weirdos, she will always be Lady Holiday.

RIP Dame Diana Rigg.

Where to stream The Great Muppet Caper