New Kid on the Street

“It was kind of weird,” Suki Lopez says of her initial audition for the role of Nina, a Latina college student who is part of the cast of the revamped Sesame Street.

The actress had to perform a scene with Elmo. Well, it wasn’t actually Elmo, the furry red Muppet, and that’s what made it kind of weird.

“It was just someone reading Elmo’s lines in a normal voice,” Lopez says with a laugh.

She acted with an actual Muppet at her callback, but it wasn’t Elmo that time around—it was the Muppet known as Murray Monster.

And though she had never traded dialogue with a Muppet or any form of puppet before, it felt natural. “I was completely entranced with the puppet. I knew there was a human being the puppet, but I didn’t see it,” she says, marveling, “It’s really a magical thing how we can suspend our disbelief around puppets.”

Lopez ultimately won the role of Nina and will make her Sesame Street debut on January 16 when the 46th season opener of the educational series that has taught millions of preschoolers the alphabet and how to count to 10 airs on HBO.

The nonprofit Sesame Workshop is now partnering with the cable network to produce the show, which ran on PBS for 45 seasons. The new season of Sesame Street will run on HBO first before it is shown on PBS KIDS in the fall of 2016.

Just as it was for so many of us, Sesame Street was an important and memorable part of Lopez’ childhood. She watched the show with her little brother when they were kids in Coral Gables, Florida. “He loved Big Bird,” Lopez says.

And she was delighted by the Sesame Street theme song. In fact, she couldn’t sit still when any music was played on the show. “I can remember always bopping around to the songs,” she says.

They’re adults now, but both Lopez and her brother got a kick out of her being cast on a show that they enjoyed together as children. “I send him pictures from the set all the time. I write, ’Hey, look where I am today. I’m right by Big Bird’s nest!’ He geeks out about it. It’s so cute,” Lopez says.

Actually, she geeked out when she first reported for work last April at the Kaufman Astoria Studios soundstage in Astoria, Queens where the show is shot and got a tour of the new Sesame Street set and not just because she had her own dressing room and a chair with her name on it, though that was cool.

“The set is so beautiful and so colorful and vibrant. It has a garden. I was like, ‘I actually want to live here!’ ” she enthuses.

The positive vibe on the set was also appealing. “Everybody was so happy to be there and so excited and so welcoming. It was exactly what you think Sesame Street should feel like,” Lopez says, adding, “That’s what it felt like on set that day and every day since.”

She is happy to have a gig that requires her to not only act but sing and dance, too. “It is the most theatrical thing on TV, and it really does harness all of the things that I am able to do,” says Lopez, who has a background in musical theater.

Lopez studied musical theater at New York City’s musical theater conservatory and theater company Collaborative Arts Project 21 (also known as CAP21) after high school and went on to play Nicole in a Disney Cruise Lines (DCL) production of Wishes. She also served as the understudy for Jasmine in a DCL production of Aladdin and played Consuelo in a national tour of West Side Story.

Asked where her love of the arts comes from, Lopez credits both her mom and her grandmother for inspiring and fostering it. Her mother was a professional ballerina and got her into a tutu when she was just a toddler. Lopez took to dance and was performing onstage when she was only three years old.

And her grandmother encouraged her to develop her vocal talent, too, and got Lopez into choir singing.

As a child, Lopez also began acting in Spanish-language commercials. “I’m Cuban-American. I grew up bilingual. In my family, Cuba is very important, and we’re about keeping the culture alive and making sure that everybody speaks Spanish still,” Lopez explains, pointing out that her Sesame Street alter ego is also bilingual.

“I’m so excited for Nina to be bilingual. I think it’s really important to have that duality there and the bilingual experience,” Lopez says. “I love to input Spanish into the scripts. I may only get two words in, but I do what I can to make sure it’s in there, and Sesame Street is very open to me trying to get in as much Spanish as possible.”

Lopez’s character, college student Nina, is new to Sesame Street and works two jobs in the neighborhood—one at the laundromat, the other at the bike shop. Nina also teaches an art class for the Muppets at the community center, and she babysits, too. “She’s got a lot of jobs—she has to pay the rent,” Lopez says.

Nina isn’t a girly girl, and Lopez loves that. “She’s not always dressed in dresses. If she wants to wear a dress, she will. But if she wants to get a little dirty and roll up her sleeves, she’ll do that, too,” Lopez says, adding, “She loves pirates!”

Lopez loves her alter ego, and she is hopeful that the preschoolers who watch Sesame Street will relate to and learn from the new girl on the block who is lucky enough to hang out with Cookie Monster, Elmo, Big Bird and the rest of the Muppets.

“I’m happy to know that I get to be part of something important and really help kids prepare for school,” the actress says. “It's kind of amazing and something I never expected but also something that's perfect for me.”