Maria-and-Elmo

“Sesame Street” is losing one of its most recognizable faces.

I was shocked when I turned on Sesame Street for my daughter the first time. There was one of my favourite faces that I had grown up with 30 years ago!

65-year-old Sonia Manzano, who has played Maria since 1974, is retiring 44 years after joining the series. She made the announcement at the American Library Association Annual Conference Monday.

In a pretty amazing interview back in 2004, Sonia spoke about what it meant to be on Sesame Street. “When I was raised in the South Bronx as a little girl, I watched an awful lot of television, and it was a big influence on my life. I saw this black and white world, and I used to wonder where I would fit in this world that didn’t seem to see me, so I think it’s really interesting that I grew up to be sort of what I needed to see on television.”

Manzano first joined the series in 1971, playing a now very well known game: “One of these things is not like the others.”

Even before joining the show Manzano remembers being inspired by Sesame Street‘s inclusion of black and Latino actors. “I have never been asked to speak with a Spanish accent,” she told the audience at the American Library Association Annual Conference. “Race relations is very difficult” to teach children, she explained, “because we’re teaching two things at the same time: self-esteem and appreciation of others.”

She was given the role of teenager Maria who had just landed a job at the local library. On the Sesame Street website it says she “flashed her infectious smile, got a job at the lending library, and immediately became part of the family”. 

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Manzano was upped to a series regular in 1974. We watched her and Luis’s journey from dating and marrying in the 80’s.

Then we saw them working together at their Fix-It shop – specializing in toaster repair – and having a daughter Gabi,

These were all events from Manzano’s own life. In a 2004 interview she said, “I was able to use things that really happened to me into scripts by breaking complex emotions like love, marriage, childbirth into something a 4-year old could understand.”

Along with acting on the show, Manzano also served as a writer. She won 15 Emmys for her writing work on the show, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series. She was named one of the “25 Greatest Latino Role Models Ever” by Latino Magazine and has been recognized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington and Hispanic Heritage Foundation. She has written for the Peabody Award-winning children’s series “Little Bill,” a children’s book called “No Dogs Allowed,” an adult novel called “The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano” and is releasing a memoir soon called “Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx.”

I can give you an early tidbit as to what her favourite moment from Sesame Stree was: when Stevie Wonder sang “Superstition.”

The show hasn’t made an official announcement about her leaving yet but Manzano has been reassuring sad fans on Twitter that Oscar, Cookie, Elmo & Abby will be just fine without her.

Sesame Street isn’t one to just let characters suddenly disappear – when actor Will Lee, who played “Mr. Hooper,” died in 1982, the show chose to address the issue of death directly – so, most likely, we’ll see Maria deciding to retire and move away from Sesame Street.

She did tweet out, “Maybe I’ll go back for 50th anniversary and make a guest appearance! Gracias!”