SPEAKER_00: This bonus episode is brought to you by NURTEC ODT Remedipant 75 mg, orally disintegrating tablets.
Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about women of science fiction.
These women inspire us to imagine impossible worlds, alien creatures, and fantastical inventions,
revealing our deepest fears and hopes for the future.
There was once a little girl who dreamt of fawns and fairies. When the little girl grew up, she decided to bring these creatures from her imagination to life.
She became a sculptor and a revered artist, known as the Mother of Yoda. Please welcome today's Womanican, Wendy Froud.
In 1954, Wendy was born in Detroit, Michigan.
She grew up surrounded by artists. Her father was a sculptor and her mother was a painter.
They encouraged Wendy to let her imagination run freely.
After all, she was named after Wendy from Peter Pan.
Wendy and her mother would spend their time outside creating fairy gardens.
At five years old, Wendy made her first doll.
The ones that came with her dollhouse felt unexciting and too real.
She wanted dolls like the characters from the stories her mother read to her,
stories full of centaurs and fawns and other fantastical creatures.
Wendy took her knack for art and went on to study at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit.
She graduated in 1976.
When she was 24 years old, Wendy moved to New York with plans to pursue her dreams while waitressing.
But her dreams arrived so quickly that she was able to skip a job hunt.
Nearing her first Christmas in New York, Wendy exhibited some of her dolls and puppets at a small show.
One of those dolls was bought, packed up as a Christmas gift and presented to Jim Henson, the creator of The Muppets.
Impressed by her skills, Jim called her.
He asked Wendy to come work for his new dark fantasy film, The Dark Crystal.
Wendy sculpted the protagonists, Jen and Kira, two small elf-like heroes who worked together to restore their nearly extinct race.
Wendy's ability to pick up new skills in the arts, along with her success sculpting Jen and Kira, helped Wendy become Jim Henson's right hand.
When creating a doll, Wendy's process comes to an end when the magical creature decides so. Wendy once said of her dolls,
They don't have the appearance that you want them to have, but the one that they want.
It's as if, in a way, they were alive in another world that I take them from.
For Wendy, The Dark Crystal was the start of more than her career. It was on the set of the film that she met Brian Froud, an illustrator and designer for Jim Henson's company.
Wendy and Brian married soon after they met.
On Jim Henson's recommendation, Wendy was recruited to the 1980s set of the Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back.
There, Wendy found herself tasked with creating a certain long-eared, green Jedi master.
SPEAKER_01: Do or do not. There is no try.
SPEAKER_00: She formed Yoda's 2-foot-2 inches tall body out of sheet foam and modeled his hands and feet.
Wendy is also credited for developing the technique used to operate Yoda's ears.
Wendy and Brian continued working with Jim on several projects, including The Muppet Show and Labyrinth.
Labyrinth featured David Bowie as the Goblin King and Wendy's own son as the baby that the Goblin King abducts.
During this time, Wendy and her team broke new ground in puppetry by figuring out how to change puppets' facial expressions using radio-controlled technology.
But these movies and their pioneering techniques took time and money.
Henson Studio projects spent months experimenting and building creatures before film scripts were even finished. Something that would doubtfully happen now.
After Labyrinth, Wendy retreated from the movie scene.
During the 1990s and early aughts, CGI became more advanced and studios stopped turning to puppeteering.
For quite a while, nothing was happening, Wendy said of this break. But now, I think audiences are realizing CGI can't achieve everything.
There's a renaissance in the craft and desire for puppetry again.
In 2016, she returned her projects to the screen for the film Four Kids and It.
And again in 2019, Wendy worked alongside her husband and their son on the Netflix prequel to the movie that jump-started her career,
The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance, 37 years after the original.
The series won an Emmy. Just days after the awards ceremony, Netflix announced they were canceling the series.
Regardless of the highs and lows of the puppeteering industry and films, Wendy has remained authentic to her craft out of love for what began her career, magical creatures.
She said, One of the most tragic moments in my life, in my early teens, was the realization that I was too old for Peter Pan to return for me.
But now, I create the magic.
I am Peter Pan. I'm Tinkerbell. I'm Wendy. And I love that idea.
Wendy and Brian have been together for 44 years and continue living in a farmhouse in the English countryside.
They have separate studios where they practice their craft and collaborate.
Wendy's son, Toby Froud, followed his mother's path and went on to work with Guillermo del Toro in the 2022 stop-motion film Pinocchio.
All month, we're talking about women in science fiction. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanica Podcast.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow!
