Emmy-Winning Actress-Writer Sonia Manzano Honored For Astonishing 44-Year Career On ‘Sesame Street’ And More – Miami Film Festival

When actress Sonia Manzano goes out in public, bringing a hanky can be quite helpful. Fans tend to react to her with deep emotion.

They know and love Manzano from Sesame Streetthe show she graced as Maria from 1971 to 2015, an extraordinary 44-year run. Her impact on American culture — as the first Latina cast in a regular role on national television — is explored in the documentary Street Smart: Lessons From a TV Iconwhich just screened at the Miami Film Festival.

Director Ernie Bustamante spent the better part of a decade on the project.

“I remember in Los Angeles, we were having coffee one day and a woman just approached her and burst into tears,” he recalls. “I remember an executive did that over a Zoom call, and it was because it’s such an important part of their life that she was a part of.”

The film, which premiered at the 2025 Bentonville Film Festival, traces Manzano’s 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’s show on PBS, Sesame Streetand before long would join the cast. Show executives offered only barebones guidance about the role.

“They didn’t give me any direction. They said, ‘Maria, it’s just yourself,’” Manzano tells Deadline. “I was very self-conscious. I didn’t know how to do that.”

She adds, “There’s a wonderful line in the movie The Color of Money. I think Paul Newman says, ‘You have to be yourself on purpose.’ And I think it’s a great statement. And I just kept peeling away layers and feeling as real as possible.”

Her authenticity would resonate with millions of viewers, including future director Ernie Bustamante. He first saw her on TV “in the 1980s,” he remembers. “I was growing up and seeing Sonia Manzano and Emilio Delgado as Maria and Luis on Sesame Street. I’m Puerto Rican and Mexican as well. And so, when I saw them on television, it mirrored my own parents… Rarely [had] I seen Latinos like Maria positively portrayed on television.”

Bustamante continues, “Maria 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’s still the same old story, and it still is today. And the representation on television… it’s kind of stayed the same, but it’s so refreshing to know that I had those TV role models early on, and I never forgot them.”

Manzano won 15 Emmys as a writer on Sesame Streetand 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’s Impact Award, recognizing a career that includes her pioneering work on Sesame Street and creating the animated series Alma’s Way for PBS Kids, for which she also voices the role of Granny Isa.

“I’m very gratified and thrilled to be honored,” she affirms. “This 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.”

The 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.

Street Smart: Lessons of a TV IconBustamante says, “is a happy, inspirational story. And it’s 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… why inclusiveness is important. This is a great reminder of it, the story of the film and public media. If it wasn’t for public media, a fully formed character of Maria wouldn’t exist.”

Manzano says, “People [looking for] a simple answer about why [they should] care about diversity, why DEI is important, it’s because different people bring different solutions to the same problem because they can’t help looking at it from a different point of view. Therefore, solutions are quicker and faster, and that’s going to be a terrible thing to lose when it’s a monoculture that many are trying to support and embrace. We will not have the answers that we need as quickly as we could.”

Street 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. “What we’re looking to do in the fall are impact screenings,” the director notes. “Simultaneously, I’m working with my producers — one of them, Steven Canals, created Pose — and reaching out [to distributors]… Ideally, it would be great to have a broadcast on television because Sonia is known for being on television.”

Bustamante adds, “Sonia means a great deal to a lot of people. And so, the talks that we are having are really encouraging.”