New neighbors
BRADLEY FREEMAN JR. WAS DOING SOME CHRISTMAS SHOPPING at Target when he got the email. Glancing down at his phone, all he could see was a preview: “Hey Brad, thanks for taking the time to audition for us…” He immediately assumed he had been rejected.
Then he read the rest.
“I had to read it over, like, seven different times to make sure that I actually got the part,” he says. “I say yes, and then I realized I didn’t actually type anything so I had to send a second email and say yes and then texted—I was like, ‘Just making sure you know that I accepted this part.’”
The part—the one that had him “hyperventilating in the middle of Target”—is the puppeteer for Wesley Walker, a new Black Muppet who, along with his father Elijah, will be introduced on March 23 by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street. “To actually, fully believe that I have my own original, brand-new character on the show is not something that I can really accept,” Freeman says.
Since debuted more than five decades ago, in 1969, the show and the nonprofit’s related programming have dealt with tough topics in an age-appropriate way. When actor Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, died in 1982, producers decided not to simply tell viewers he had gone away—instead they built an episode around death and grief. “We were advised to take the” In 2002, the South African version of introduced Kami, a 5-year-old HIV-positive Muppet, who was an orphan. More recently, the organization has created Muppets who can help broach other difficult subjects through its Sesame Street in Communities initiative, which provides materials and media for kids in a wide range of situations. Lily, who made her debut in 2011, struggled with food and housing insecurity. Karli, who was introduced in 2019, was in foster care and had a mother who struggled with addiction. Julia, a Muppet with autism, first appeared in a digital storybook in 2015 before becoming a regular on the show in 2017.
