But when TV writer Ernie Bustamante read Manzano’s 2015 memoir, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx, his mind went to an entirely different neighborhood: He thought her life story would make a great sitcom. 

He envisioned a coming-of-age series, with Manzano as “the ultimate protagonist” who pushes through all of her struggles. “She conquers. She overcomes.”

Manzano liked the idea, and the pair got to know one another as they worked to sell it to studios. But after years of trying with little success, they pivoted to a new enterprise.

The result is , a new feature-length documentary that explores Manzano’s life and career as the first Latina to appear regularly in an American TV series. The film is making the rounds at this spring as Bustamante searches for a distribution deal. In the meantime, he’s seeking out schools and universities to arrange “impact screenings” for aspiring filmmakers, actors, educators and anyone wanting to know more about the iconic actor — and the groundbreaking series that both offered her a platform and revolutionized children’s television.

“All young people want to change the world to some degree,” Manzano said in an interview. “I was lucky enough to fall into a group that wanted to do the same thing.”

In the film, she likens the show’s key creators — puppeteer Jim Henson, producer and composer , among others — to another seminal ‘60s group: “The Beatles are great — separately they’re all good. But together they made some magic.”

‘I had to be myself on purpose’

Manzano grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s, before the notorious city planner Robert Moses “destroyed” it, in her words, with a tangle of expressways cutting through mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Her parents were both Puerto Rican — her father was a roofer, her mother a seamstress, and the everyday talk in the neighborhood revolved around la lucha, the struggle to survive.

Raised in a home where her father drank and her parents often fought, Manzano quips in the film, “Mostly they struggled with each other.”

She found solace in TV, movie musicals in particular, and imagined herself in starring roles. When a teacher took her to see the movie West Side Story, she was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the spectacle and awed by how it transformed the gritty streets of New York into art. At the end of the film, she burst into tears.

“I think it touched me so much because it was the first time I saw things in my neighborhood exalted and made beautiful,” she says in the film.

Manzano’s first big break came when a teacher encouraged her to apply to New York’s High School for the Performing Arts. She’d eventually make her way to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studying with, among others, the renowned mime , who introduced her to the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin — she’d later bring her own to Sesame Street. 

By 1971, Manzano had fallen in with a group of Carnegie Mellon drama students helping classmate John-Michael Tebelak produce his senior thesis, an improvisational drama based on the Gospel of Saint Matthew. It was a hit at school and the group took it to on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where, with the help of composer Stephen Schwartz — only two years older than Manzano and the rest of the cast — it morphed into the surprise hit musical .

Sesame Street, another surprise hit, had debuted on TV in 1969, and by 1971, Mexican American activists on the West Coast were demanding more Latino representation on the show. Manzano got a call for an audition and impressed producer Stone, who offered her a part.

Manzano had actually glimpsed the show at Carnegie Mellon, wandering into the student union one day as a very young James Earl Jones slowly and deliberately onscreen. The scene cut to , married characters who also happened to be Black. “I really flipped because in those days you never saw people of color on television — and if you did, it wasn’t these charming couples.”

Coming on the heels of the Civil Rights movement, the show’s representations made sense. None of it happened in a vacuum, she said. “America was ripe for it.”

Manzano’s first moment of reckoning as a Latina on the show happened before she even appeared on camera: A makeup artist was at work heavily tinting her face when Stone walked in and insisted that she appear onscreen as natural-looking as possible. The makeup — at least most of it — had to go.

“It made me understand that these people at Sesame Street, they really meant what they said — they really were interested in having a real Puerto Rican on television that was not slick or glib. They wanted real humans.”

Recalling the moment more than 50 years later, she said, “It freed me, because I realized I didn’t have to play any part. I could just be myself.” Whenever she tells the story, she likes to cite her favorite line from : “I had to be myself on purpose.”

With her improv and musical theater background, Manzano soon became a reliable player who could do nearly anything.

Puppeteer , who performed on the show for 26 years, said her abilities shone through despite the show’s demands: In early seasons, cast and crew were expected to shoot as many as 130 episodes.

“Everybody is great, but when you had a scene with Maria, it was just guaranteed to be awesome, because she was such comedy gold,” he said in an interview. 

All the same, Mazzarino said, Manzano and her co-stars felt like real people. By the late 1980s, Maria would fall in love with and marry Luis, played by , another longtime player. Her scenes with Delgado rang true, he said, bringing a truly loving couple to the screen.

“Even though Sonia can do great comedy, she always felt grounded,” Mazzarino said. 

Manzano herself has a fondness for the show’s loose, improvisational feel, especially in the early days: It was, she recalled, a party-like atmosphere in which everyone was trying to crack up everyone else. That allowed her to both try out her comedy chops and search for a way to let the Muppets’ madcap humor shine. 

“They were completely zany,” she recalled. “They ate tables. You could throw them against the wall and nothing would happen to them.”

She recalled an early episode in which a scene began taping before puppeteer , who played The Count, could make it to the set. As his colleagues proceeded with the scene, Nelson swept in. “And there was no interruption,” Manzano recalled. “It’s a remarkable moment.”

Over time, she became renowned for the knowing gaze she’d offer to the camera, breaking through the fourth wall in exasperation each time a Muppet co-star — most notably Oscar the Grouch — did or said something ridiculous. 

“That was a real breakthrough — no pun intended — when I understood what my job was,” she said, “that I could have this relationship with the camera separate from my conversation with the puppet right next to me. I could look at the camera and say, ‘Do you get this? I mean, do you see what’s going on?’”

Over the years, Sesame Street scripts became more research-based and deliberate, and life on the set tightened up. Manzano left the show in 2015 and gets nostalgic about the “looser kind of environment” it had at the beginning. “As they became more tame, they kind of lost a little bit of that craziness.”

‘She never talked down to children’

Michael Davis met Manzano in 2005, when TV Guide sent him to write a piece marking the show’s 35th anniversary. By then, Manzano was also a writer for the show — she’d eventually earn 15 Emmy awards for her writing. She was the first cast member he met.

“I remember coming home to my wife and saying, ‘You know, I met the actress who plays Maria on Sesame Street today,’” Davis said in an interview. “‘I had a long conversation with her, and she’s the realest deal I think I’ve ever encountered. She is exactly as her character and her TV persona projects — open, funny, candid, intelligent, capable of making great sense about preschool children and their needs.’”

He filled a notebook with her thoughts that day.

Davis, who would go on to write the 2008 book , said that for all of her comedic instincts, Manzano understood her job as a trusted adult in kids’ lives. “She never talked down to children,” he said. “And I think this is true of the Muppet performers and other cast members: They never talked the cutesy voice or talked baby talk, even to 2-year-olds. They addressed children with great respect and interest and really listened to what they had to say. And yeah, it was just a beautiful thing to watch.”

It’s difficult to imagine another actor whose entire adult life has been captured by the camera, he said. Manzano grew up on the show, first appearing at age 21. She fell in love and , had a baby and changed careers several times, at one point working construction. In one renowned episode, she led the cast as they took viewers through the grieving process when old . 

In the documentary, Manzano quips, “We were the first reality show — without the whining.”

Davis, whose second book on the show, , is due out this fall, said Manzano herself underwent a remarkable transformation from her Godspell days. “She started out as an ingénue — basically a character who was in her teens, just this perky Latina who is new to the street.” She grew, he said, “into one of the most influential characters in the history of Sesame Street and a trailblazer in many, many ways.”

Manzano stuck around the show until age 65 before stepping aside to make way for a new generation of actors — and to write books and produce . At 75, she shows few signs of slowing down, working more recently with another Sonia from the South Bronx, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to help found the .

Through it all, Davis said, “she has the most level head, and she is almost painfully normal, and I love her for that.”

He added, “She knows who she is — she absolutely knows who she is, and why she’s here.”

A video illustrates a cartoon Brachiosaurus trudging along. The dinosaur has bright colors and a friendly voice carefully designed to draw the attention of a toddler. As the green leaf-eater goes to speak, a banner ad floats across the screen.

Experts caution that this experience can distract the child. “There’s advertising embedded into the video, or at the bottom of the video, or the side,” said Kaitlin Tiches, a medical librarian at Boston Children Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab. That can be especially problematic if the ad isn’t developmentally appropriate for the viewer. 

The tough choice about whether to allow babies and children to consume content online is nothing new. Neither is that comes with it for many parents who opt to allow their little ones to access digital media, from the American Academy of Pediatrics that suggests to avoid it for babies under 18-months-old and to limit it for kids under age 5.

At a time when kids are gaining access to digital devices earlier — many of them as infants or toddlers — and cuts to public broadcasting have put an end to many of the high-quality programs American children have been raised on for generations, the decision has become more complicated.

, which comes with its own unique blend of allure for parents and children has become a staple in many homes. The streaming site is seeing a surge in popularity, especially among families with children under 2, even though child development experts have expressed about the use of the platform for young children.

According to a recent published by Pew Research Center, 62% of toddlers ages 2 and under watch YouTube, a significant spike from the 45% reported in 2020. There was also an uptick in toddlers who watched YouTube daily, rising from 24% in 2020 to 35% in 2025. 

“I think it’s a very striking rise,” said Colleen McClain, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “It’s a great example of a theme from our report, which is that tech starts young.” 

What to Know Before Letting Kids Hit Play on YouTube

The YouTube boost arrives as concerns continue to swirl about the site. Tiches warned of unfettered advertising and the company’s focus on profit over education. She pointed out that traditional children’s media has clear parameters around advertising  — the episode plays, then cuts to commercial break. But on YouTube, prevalent banner ads appear throughout the screen, with other ads interjecting in the middle of an episode. That children’s learning. 

“I think because YouTube creators are monetized, there’s a lot of pressure to successfully create videos, and with the young children on these platforms, it’s a big market,” Tiches said. “Ads might be very long and again, if parents are not watching with their children, then the children might not know how to skip them. Then, it’s minutes of an ad that may not be appropriate for very young children.”

While creators can mark whether their video is child-friendly, the ads — and videos themselves — may not be developmentally appropriate. A found that only 19% of the videos infants and toddlers watched on YouTube were age appropriate. That report was based on data about young kids and YouTube by Common Sense Media, which revealed that roughly one-fifth of advertisements contained age-inappropriate content including violence, drugs and sexual content. About one-quarter of ads were child-appropriate, with most (74%) deemed “neutral,” for companies like Volvo, State Farm Insurance and Casper Sleep Inc. 

But even those can influence children on consumerism, which may not be the intended point of watching content. 

Curation and quality control are important, experts said. Shortly after the Common Sense report came out, its lead author, Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan , “YouTube is kids’ favorite playground right now.” She added: “We have to ask whether it’s being maintained in the right ways, if the equipment is safe and giving kids freedom to explore and have positive experiences? Or are they being steered towards experiences that benefit marketers and brands, but don’t support their developmental growth?”

Many entities, such as PBS, have their for children’s programming, thanks to the , a law that requires broadcast television to air a dedicated amount of educational content and limited advertising during children’s programs. Streaming services like YouTube do not have to adhere to those rules. YouTube’s asks publishing for a primary audience of children to mark their content as “Made for Kids” and to ensure they’re “complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable laws.” 

“The content I’m viewing on Netflix or Disney has been selected by that company; if they say it’s child-focused, depending on the company, I can have a little more reasonable awareness or trust,” said Kate Blocker, director of research and programs at Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. 

“I could post a video and say it’s educational, but what does it mean?” Tiches added. “There’s not necessarily a lot of oversight into what is considered truly educational, or [ensuring] the value of it is rooted in early education practices.” 

Blocker said some parents, while well aware of issues on social media sites, may view YouTube as a separate entity akin to watching traditional television or a streaming service. But Blocker points out the platform more closely mimics the former, with the ability to comment on videos, have an auto-play feature and deliver suggested content driven by algorithms. 

“There’s a lot of national dialogue and awareness building around social media and its particular harms, but generally speaking I don’t think people connect that thought to YouTube,” she said. “They’re thinking of Instagram and TikToks and teens  — [but] not making the same connection to the content on YouTube.” 

Some parents are somewhat cognizant of limiting their children’s screen time, at the very least. According to the Pew report, roughly one-quarter of parents said that they believe they can “do more” to limit their toddler’s screen time access. As the child gets older, that share becomes almost half: 47% of parents believe they can do better limiting their 8- to 12-year-old’s screen time. 

“I have a 3-year-old, and we don’t let her use a phone or tablet or anything,” one parent said in a focus group conducted by Pew in March. The parent added that they let their 3 year old use a laptop for a week’s subscription to an educational platform. “It got me thinking there probably are opportunities to use technology as an educational tool … but I’m so scared about the consequences … that I’m probably hesitant to use it at all.”

The Pew report highlighted that children found YouTube content educational and entertaining, but the research did not delve into why parents turn toward the platform. The screen time, Pew’s McClain said, could be driven, in part, by parents simply battling with high stress levels. 

“From qualitative research, we’re hearing more and more that it’s really hard; parents are struggling,” Blocker said. “Sometimes you need something to keep your little one still, to do the dishes or help your older one with homework.” 

Some may turn toward YouTube because of its easy accessibility across various devices. Others may be drawn to its free model at a time when the cost of cable subscriptions and streaming service continue to rise. And with funding for public media — most notably PBS — in recent months, families are left with less reliable options for high-quality children’s programming.  

“Regardless of the platform, it can feel overwhelming,” Tiches said. But families might  have an easier time figuring out whether programs on a more traditional network, like PBS, have had input from educational or developmental experts, versus on YouTube, where parents have to search for information about the creator, Tiches added.

How Parents Can Help Kids Stream Smarter

Experts acknowledge that it is not feasible to expect parents to avoid screen time entirely. from The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages use of screens for babies under 18 months old and recommends that parents who want to introduce digital media to their 18- to 24-months old toddlers do so by co-viewing high-quality programs. According to the Pew report, most of them are: 74% of parents of kids age 12 and under watch YouTube with their children, and more than 90% of parents of kids 5 and under do. 

“I think it speaks to the way parents are navigating all this technology for their kids,” McClain said. “Parents are really navigating these decisions on a daily basis, dealing with a lot of emotions around them and trying to do the best for their kids.” 

If watching together is not possible, Blocker suggests that having the content on a large screen — not a small screen plugged in with headphones — is preferred, so the parent is still able to hear the content. 

Tiches added that parents can look into who is making the content their children are consuming, and at the very least, should look at the type of content that it is. If a video is fast-paced, consider finding something more calming, especially for kids under 2.  

“You can tell sometimes from the title if there are shapes, colors, numbers, letters … that’s going to be a lot of information, but probably not as beneficially educational,” she said. “Versus really focusing on circles, for example, or words that start with the letter ‘A.’”

Beyond what parents can do though, there is a push for more legislation from both the federal government and technology companies. 

“Parents don’t want to do this alone,” McClain said. “One of the things that stand out in our work is [that] parents are people: they work, they struggle with their own screen time. And that, combined with [the fact that] they want technology companies to do more, really paints a picture.”

For parents of young children concerned about screen time, ubiquitous media has long created tension, but the past year has highlighted the potential of high-quality digital programming to keep kids, and their parents, learning and connected even while they’re stuck at home.

“Just as stone tools were the technological breakthrough of early humans, today’s kids have digital platforms to access the worlds’ information at their fingertips!” says Michael H. Levine, senior vice president of learning and impact for Noggin, Nickelodeon’s early learning service. “These now ubiquitous means of communication and learning weren’t even contemplated three decades ago.”

This whirlwind history traces significant advances in the quest to make educational children’s television and new forms of media an engaging experience—instead of one where the viewers are merely passive recipients.

• The precursors: seeing yourself in the classroom. From the very beginning of the medium, children have been hooked and parents have been concerned: Is my child watching too much? Is it harmful? Could it maybe be a bit beneficial (because I have laundry to fold)?

In a  the scholar and television host fondly remembers watching Ding Dong School—which premiered in 1952— and following along as Miss Frances led activities. Ding Dong School was shot with low-angled cameras to simulate the point of view of preschoolers.

The following year saw the launch of Romper Room, which wasn’t just one show but rather a broadcast concept that started in Baltimore and soon spread to dozens of other cities, each with a different host. The original, Miss Nancy, became known for holding up the frame of a hand mirror and calling out names of the viewers she could “see” in their homes. Romper Room taught math, spelling and etiquette.

The popularity of Captain Kangaroo, which premiered in 1955, tilted children’s television in favor of entertainment rather than education.

Essentially, Miss Frances, Miss Nancy and Captain Kangaroo pioneered distance learning before the term came into existence, and the examples they set can be instructive for today’s teachers who find themselves on the other side of the screen from their young students.

As , the first-ever Early Childhood Teacher of the Year , “Teaching is about 90% theater. Kids are going to know if you’re excited to see them or if you’re frustrated.”

• The man with the cardigan sweater: seeing into your heart. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, featuring the soft-spoken and infinitely patient Fred Rogers, premiered in 1968. It may have seemed like just another children’s series at the time, with the host interacting with puppets and singing songs, but over time it has come to be appreciated as an almost transcendent vehicle for children to get in touch with their emotions.

The show went off the air in 2001, and Fred Rogers died in 2003, but his kind spirit lives on in a well-received documentary, a feature film starring Tom Hanks and the PBS Kids series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.

• Big Bird & friends: seeing people like you on screen. Sesame Street, which premiered in 1969, the same year we landed on the moon, represented a “giant leap” for children’s television. Creators Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett adhered to a rigorous curriculum instead of selecting lessons based on what felt right.

They enlisted the brilliant puppeteer Jim Henson to create unforgettable characters that interacted with live actors. In addition, they conscientiously built a community that its intended audience would recognize as their own.

In his foreword to David Kamp’s Sunny Days: The Children’s Television That Changed America, published in 2020, drummer, bandleader and writer Questlove acknowledges: “There were plenty of cities on other shows…. But none of these cities were familiar to me the way that Sesame Street was. It was urban, maybe the most urban show on the air. On Sesame Street, ‘urban’ meant what it is supposed to mean: a cityscape filled with different kinds of people, as well as busy stoops and storefronts where those people went to talk and joke and eat and sing. This was a community in the literal sense, which, to us kids watching at home all over America, became a community in the figurative sense.”

Nickelodeon, which was founded by the educator Geraldine Laybourne in 1979, became the first children’s channel on cable television. It took some vital lessons from Sesame Street and added dimensions and characters of its own, notably the bilingual Dora the Explorer, who debuted in 1999.

Levine, who was previously Founding Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, told me, “Sesame set the stage for a plethora of innovation in the children’s media space. They built the mold, and companies like Nickelodeon and its offshoot Noggin, pioneered important new projects like talking back at the TV so that children could imagine playing along with their beloved characters.”

• Home video and the Internet: seeing what you want, when you want. While innovations in content have continued since Sesame Street, the big story of the past few decades is the technological innovations that seem to hand control to children and their adults.

First, VCRs made the content “on demand”; then DVDs and video games made it portable; and now YouTube and other streaming services allow children to instantly conjure virtually any favorite character, song or lesson in the back seat of the car. Along the way, television, or video elements became part of a more interactive multimedia landscape.

The advent of touch screens, Levine acknowledges, is both a boon and a burden – enabling new levels of interactivity (including games) but also raising the expectation in young children that everything should be tappable (even books). The web’s power and risks have prompted organizations like and publications like which Levine co-authored with Lisa Guernsey, to help parents make better choices.

• Seeing people like you in history. For Levine and his colleagues at Noggin, the next stage for young audiences has arisen in response to both the COVID-19 pandemic, which is keeping families at home; and the national reckoning with the legacy of racism.

A new music video series, Rhymes Through Times, celebrates historical African American leaders, starting with Ruby Bridges and Thurgood Marshall. Informally known as “Hamilton for Preschoolers,” the series is a collaboration with Christopher Jackson (the original George Washington in Hamilton) and Lion Forge Animation (Hair Love).

An upcoming project called “Big Heart” will tap musical talent including rapper Aloe Blacc to tackle broader social-emotional lessons, which Levine says should be part of the national conversation around learning loss.

“Our families live in an era of transformational crisis and opportunity,” says Levine. “Certainly, new media forms are evolving every day to help us remain productive, connected and entertained. But none of this tech power will make our children’s lives better unless it is deployed to strengthen the power of human relationships. The legacy of pioneers such as Sesame Street, Fred Rogers and Nickelodeon is that they all promoted a kinder citizenry and a shared future for all children. That’s needed now more than ever.”