SESAME STREET Star Opens Up About Her 44 Years on the Iconic Show

Published: November 24, 2025

By Michaela Gordoni

Sonia Manzano, SESAME STREET’s Maria and 15-time Emmy Award winner, opened up about her new documentary, STREET SMART: LESSONS FROM A TV ICON, and her time on the beloved kids show.

“These projects take a very long time. You shoot a little bit, you show it, you get more funding, you shoot a little bit more,” she said of her documentary. “I was very interested in how people saw me.”

“I know how I see myself. I’m not being falsely modest, and I know that I’ve made an impact on people, but it was interesting for me to experience how other people perceive me,” she told Woman’s World.

Manzano, now 75, was a regular on SESAME STREET for 44 years. She was also a writer on almost 150 episodes in the series, which won her 15 Emmys. Manzano retired from SESAME STREET in 2015. Since then, she’s written children’s books and created PBS’s animated show, ALMA’S WAY.

The documentary depicts her journey from a troubled childhood in the South Bronx to the High School of Performing Arts, to Carnegie Mellon, and to SESAME STREET, Gold Derby reported.

In the documentary, she recalls always watching shows that had exclusively white actors.

“I couldn’t articulate it, but I did feel invisible,” she said. “People would say, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ And I didn’t know what to say, because I never saw anyone who looked like me doing anything, and I think that took a toll.”

“So when I had the opportunity to be on TV, I remembered that feeling and thought about how I wanted to remedy it,” she said.

And she did throughout her career.

“All the power on television is behind the camera, for the most part. After being in front of the camera on SESAME STREET for about eight years, I still felt like I wanted to contribute more, and I questioned some of the Latino content,” she said.

“If there’s one scene where Cookie Monster eats a table and another where I talk about Spanish words, what’s going to be more interesting for kids? Cookie Monster eating the table! The cultural bit could seem more academic, so I wanted to change that,” she explained.

When she talked to the producer about it, they gave her the opportunity to write.

“I thought that if my ideas had validity, maybe if I wrote them myself, they’d be even stronger. I never wanted to write for any other kids’ show. I only wanted to write for SESAME STREET and I knew the characters very well.”

“I was already in love with Oscar the Grouch, and I already knew how important the humans were, but the first thing I wrote actually had no Muppets in it, and I didn’t even think about that consciously until the director pointed it out,” she said. “I loved black-and-white movies and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so the first thing I wrote was a take on their film TOP HAT where I’m wearing a feathered dress and singing that ‘Hola’ is how you say ‘Hello’ in Spanish.”

She noted that a unique thing about SESAME STREET is the human characters’ age.

“In a lot of television, once the ingenue became older, they would hire another ingenue to replace her. I was never replaced. I just got older.”

“Maria got a job, and she married and had a baby. Dulcy Singer and the other producers felt that people age in life, so SESAME STREET should show that,” she said. “The Muppets don’t age, but the humans certainly do.”

Manzano loves inspiring young girls through the show.

“I would take umbrage when Oscar the Grouch would call me ‘little lady.’ We spoke about how women could do anything that a man could do, and we illustrated that by having Maria get a job as a construction worker, so we were setting those little seeds in little girls’ minds that they were equal citizens.”

Manzano’s documentary screened at the DOC NYC festival on Nov. 16 It’s unclear when or where it will be available to stream online.

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