Sesame Street debuts Ji-Young, first Asian American muppet

What's in a name? Well, for Ji-Young, the newest muppet resident of Sesame Street, her name is a sign she was meant to live there.

"So, in Korean traditionally, the two syllables, they each mean something different, and ji means, like, smart or wise. And young means, like, brave or courageous and strong," Ji-Young explained during a recent interview. "But we were looking it up and guess what? Ji also means sesame."

At only seven years old, Ji-Young is making history as the first Asian American muppet in the Sesame Street canon. She is Korean American and has two passions: rocking out on her electric guitar and skateboarding. The children's TV program, which first aired 52 years ago this month, gave The Associated Press a first look at its adorable new occupant.

Ji-Young will formally be introduced in See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special. Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi and Naomi Osaka are among the celebrities appearing in the special, which will drop on Nov. 25 (Thanksgiving day in the U.S.) on HBO Max, Sesame Street social media platforms and on local PBS stations.

Some of Ji-Young's personality comes from her puppeteer, Kathleen Kim, 41, who is also Korean American. Kim got into puppetry in her 30s. In 2014, she was accepted into a Sesame Street workshop. That evolved into a mentorship, and she became part of the team the following year.

Being a puppeteer on a show Kim watched growing up was a dream come true, she said. But helping shape an original muppet is a whole other feat.

"I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I'm putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid," Kim said.

But fellow puppeteer Leslie Carrara-Rudolph — who performs the character   Abby Cadabby — reminded her, "It's not about us ... It's about this message."

Ji-Young's existence is the culmination of a lot of discussions after the events of 2020 — George Floyd's death and instances of anti-Asian hate. Like a lot of companies, Sesame Street reflected on how it could "meet the moment," said Kay Wilson Stallings, executive vice-president of creative and production for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street.

Sesame Workshop established two task forces — one to look at its content and another to look at its own diversity. What developed was Coming Together, a multi-year initiative addressing how to talk to children about race, ethnicity and culture.

One result was eight-year-old Tamir. While not the show's first Black muppet, he was one of the first used to talk about subjects like racism.

"When we knew we were going to be doing this work that was going to focus on the Asian and Pacific Islanders experience, we of course knew we needed to create an Asian muppet as well," Stallings said.

These newer muppets — their personalities and their looks — were constructed in a matter of a months. The process normally takes at least a couple of years. There are outside experts and a cross-section of employees known as the "culture trust" who weigh in on every aspect of a new muppet, Stallings said.

For Kim, it was crucial that Ji-Young not be "generically pan-Asian."