{"id":233915,"date":"2026-04-16T07:27:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/233915\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T07:27:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:27:25","slug":"sesame-street-star-sonia-manzano-receives-impact-award-at-miami-ff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/233915\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Sesame Street’ Star Sonia Manzano Receives Impact Award At Miami FF."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen actress Sonia Manzano<\/a> goes out in public, bringing a hanky can be quite helpful. Fans tend to react to her with deep emotion.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey know and love Manzano from Sesame Street, the show she graced as Maria from 1971 to 2015, an extraordinary 44-year run. Her impact on American culture \u2014 as the first Latina cast in a regular role on national television \u2014 is explored in the documentary Street Smart: Lessons From a TV Icon<\/a>, which just screened at the Miami Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Ernie Bustamante<\/a> spent the better part of a decade on the project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI remember in Los Angeles, we were having coffee one day and a woman just approached her and burst into tears,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI remember an executive did that over a Zoom call, and it was because it\u2019s such an important part of their life that she was a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sonia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSonia Manzano on \u2018Sesame Streeet\u2019 with Two-Headed Monster in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/Courtesy of Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, which premiered at the 2025 Bentonville Film Festival, traces Manzano\u2019s journey growing up in the South Bronx as the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants. She attended the High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan before enrolling at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. As an undergraduate, she caught glimpses of a new children\u2019s show on PBS, Sesame Street, and before long would join the cast. Show executives offered only barebones guidance about the role.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"L-R<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Elyssa Bustamante as Miss Gloria, Grisselle Escotto as Sonia Manzano, and Andrew Delman as Jon Stone in a dramatized scene from \u2018Street Smart: Lessons From a TV Icon.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMiami Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey didn\u2019t give me any direction. They said, \u2018Maria, it\u2019s just yourself,\u2019\u201d Manzano tells Deadline. \u201cI was very self-conscious. I didn\u2019t know how to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe adds, \u201cThere\u2019s a wonderful line in the movie The Color of Money. I think Paul Newman says, \u2018You have to be yourself on purpose.\u2019 And I think it\u2019s a great statement. And I just kept peeling away layers and feeling as real as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Ernie Bustamante attends the 43rd Miami Film Festival on April 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSergi Alexander\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tHer authenticity would resonate with millions of viewers, including future director Ernie Bustamante. He first saw her on TV \u201cin the 1980s,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI was growing up and seeing Sonia Manzano and Emilio Delgado as Maria and Luis on Sesame Street. I\u2019m Puerto Rican and Mexican as well. And so, when I saw them on television, it mirrored my own parents\u2026 Rarely [had] I seen Latinos like Maria positively portrayed on television.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sonia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSonia Manzano, Emilio Delgado, and Desiree Casado on \u2018Sesame Street\u2019 in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPBS\/Courtesy of Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tBustamante continues, \u201cMaria on Sesame Street was grounded and real, but she also had a sense of humor. Her scenes with Oscar the Grouch, and we go into that in the film, how much of a comedic duo they were. And in mainstream television, Latinos are very often caricatures. Sonia even says it in the film, it\u2019s still the same old story, and it still is today. And the representation on television\u2026 it\u2019s kind of stayed the same, but it\u2019s so refreshing to know that I had those TV role models early on, and I never forgot them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sonia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSonia Manzano with Rita Moreno at the 2016 Daytime Emmy Awards on May 1, 2016 in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tManzano won 15 Emmys as a writer on Sesame Street, and in 2016 she received a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award, an honor presented by another icon, EGOT winner Rita Moreno. At the Miami Film Festival, Manzano earned MFF\u2019s Impact Award, recognizing a career that includes her pioneering work on Sesame Street and creating the animated series Alma\u2019s Way for PBS Kids, for which she also voices the role of Granny Isa.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m very gratified and thrilled to be honored,\u201d she affirms. \u201cThis has kind of special meaning for me because more people from the Latin community are honoring me. And so, I hope that when they say that I have inspired them, that it inspires them to inspire others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary is screening at a time when the Trump administration has attacked Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives that promote visibility and opportunities for minorities and taken an axe to public television which it views with ideological suspicion.<\/p>\n

\n\tStreet Smart: Lessons of a TV Icon, Bustamante says, \u201cis a happy, inspirational story. And it\u2019s one that when we sit down and watch with audiences, people are looking for inspiration and people also are looking for a reminder of why representation is important\u2026 why inclusiveness is important. This is a great reminder of it, the story of the film and public media. If it wasn\u2019t for public media, a fully formed character of Maria wouldn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tManzano says, \u201cPeople [looking for] a simple answer about why [they should] care about diversity, why DEI is important, it\u2019s because different people bring different solutions to the same problem because they can\u2019t help looking at it from a different point of view. Therefore, solutions are quicker and faster, and that\u2019s going to be a terrible thing to lose when it\u2019s a monoculture that many are trying to support and embrace. We will not have the answers that we need as quickly as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Street<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Street Smart<\/p>\n

\n\tStreet Smart: Lessons of a TV Icon has played at DOC NYC and the Doc Soup Series at Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto, as well as Bentonville and the Miami Film Festival. \u201cWhat we\u2019re looking to do in the fall are impact screenings,\u201d the director notes. \u201cSimultaneously, I\u2019m working with my producers \u2014 one of them, Steven Canals, created Pose \u2014 and reaching out [to distributors]\u2026 Ideally, it would be great to have a broadcast on television because Sonia is known for being on television.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBustamante adds, \u201cSonia means a great deal to a lot of people. And so, the talks that we are having are really encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When actress Sonia Manzano goes out in public, bringing a hanky can be quite helpful. Fans tend to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[104453,123,69196,125,124,104454,104455],"class_list":["post-233915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-ernie-bustamante","tag-miami","tag-miami-film-festival","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-sonia-manzano","tag-street-smart-lessons-from-a-tv-icon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}