Oscar's early concept art, had TV cameras handled that color.
What Could Have Been examples for Sesame Street.Pre-Production
- Jim Henson originally intended Oscar to be magenta, but TV cameras in 1969 couldn't handle that color. The first-season orange Oscar was abandoned for the same reason.
- The pilot episodes had the Muppets kept separate from the humans and the street, but since the kids paid more attention to the Muppets in test screenings, the Muppets were wisely integrated.
- The producers' original intention with Gordon and Susan was for them to be unmarried domestic partners in an attempt to further show diversity on the street, though Joan Ganz Cooney immediately axed this idea upon hearing it, saying, "Let them be married, for God's sake!" Also, Robert Guillaume was testing for the part of Gordon at the same time Roscoe Orman was.
- Jim Henson was once considered for the role of Big Bird as he was lanky and naturally over 6 feet tall, but Big Bird's builder, Kermit Love, felt that Jim didn't have enough of a bird-like walk. Henson then offered the role to Frank Oz, but Oz hated performing full-bodied puppets and declined.
- Gary Owens was cast in a spy-themed spoof as "The Man from Alphabet
" that was widely hyped before the show's initial launch. But the sketches tested poorly and were deemed too confusing for children, and ultimately never made it to air. The Dirk Niblick and Mathnet segments of Square One TV, from the same writers, seem similar in tone to what had been planned for The Man from Alphabet, with Owens even voicing Niblick.
Scrapped Episodes/Segments
- In The '90s, there was a big debate at CTW about whether to do an episode tackling divorce. Some staffers argued that it was now a big part of American society and needed to be addressed, while others felt it was a "middle class" issue that didn't have relevance to the show's low-income target audience. While there was a 1990 News Flash sketch about a bird whose parents lived in separate trees,note eventually they decided to write and film an episode usually called "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce" (though the descriptions of the show suggest that the parents were actually just separated), and tentatively scheduled it to air on April 10, 1992. The focus was particularly on Snuffy's little sister Alice and her reaction when their father comes to visit; one scene reportedly had her hearing her parents arguing and beating up her teddy bear in frustration. Before the scheduled airing it was screened for focus groups of children, but the Bathos of the show's most fantasy-based characters dealing with a very realistic situation confused them. It got such a negative reaction from the test audiences that the show decided to scrap the episode completely, and it's never been aired or even shown publicly, outside of some footage screened for a Sesame Street museum exhibit and documentary. Eventually, a direct-to-video special was produced, in which Abby's parents spilt up. Her mom has since remarried, leading to Abby getting a step brother named Rudy, who joined the cast in Season 47.
- At one time there was an episode that was supposed to air on September 27, 2010, in which Katy Perry performs a version of "Hot and Cold" with Elmo. However, because the song wasn't kid-friendly enough, and because of the outcry of Media Watchdog groups over her Impossibly-Low Neckline, Sesame Workshop had to pull the episode a few days before it was to air. Perry appeared on Saturday Night Live later that week wearing an Elmo shirt in reference to the controversy. You can still watch the video here.
- A member of the writing staff did an interview about the show's pop culture parodies like "Game of Chairs" and "House of Bricks," where he revealed they also considered a sketch based on Breaking Bad, but couldn't figure out a way to relate the concept to kids.
- Material will sometimes get approved by the producers, but then get rejected by the educational consultants, because they feel the educational concept wasn't explained properly, or that children won't understand the material. In his memoirs, longtime writer Joseph A. Bailey mentions some sketches that got rejected this way, including one where Cookie Monster gives a weather report, but gets hungry and starts eating the map. They specifically objected to the line "Chicago is delicious!", for fear that some kids watching would think that he really did eat the city of Chicago.
- A second The ABC's of COVID-19 special was planned for May 30, 2020, but was pre-empted by coverage of protests over George Floyd's death and was rescheduled to June 6, 2020. Instead, that special became Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism, made in response to the incident that pre-empted the special's slot. The second special would eventually air on June 13th, 2020.
- The show celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1979 with a special called A Walking Tour of Sesame Street, a fairly standard Clip Show hosted by James Earl Jones. But another anniversary special proposal that kicked around CTW was the ambitious A-B-Chorus Line, a Whole-Plot Reference to and parody of A Chorus Line, based around a Metafictional origin story that Sesame Street is a Show Within a Show, and all of the cast members (Muppet and human) had to audition for it back in 1968, leading to extended flashback scenes of the audition process. Cookie Monster tried to win the role of Mr. Hooper, Grover was a coffee delivery monster who unexpectedly got a role, and Gladys the Cow tried out for every single part.
Other
- Carroll Spinney was very close to being aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger as Big Bird. No, seriously. Fortunately, the expenses of sending him and the puppet suit into space were enough to keep him off the shuttle and its explosive fate.
- Spinney wanted Noel MacNeal (from The Puzzle Place, Bear in the Big Blue House, Oobi, Eureeka's Castle, The Good Night Show for a short period of time, and eventually, Between the Lions) to succeed him as Big Bird, but MacNeal couldn't get Big Bird's voice right. However, MacNeal has performed Big Bird on occasions where neither Spinney nor Matt Vogel (Spinney's understudy and eventual successor for the character) were available, such as the 2010 Macy's parade.
- Spinney almost left the show after the first season. He'd previously worked on the Boston version of The Bozo Show and had taken a pay cut to work on Sesame Street. Having not made much money on season 1 of Sesame Street, and with no other Muppet projects he was needed for until season 2, Spinney went back to Boston to work on Bozo, and was offered his own local Boston show, with a hefty salary. Spinney was leaning heavily toward accepting the offer, but Muppet builder Kermit Love talked him out of it.
- Originally, in 2004, Natalie Portman was supposed to have appeared in three episodes as Natalie, a woman who was filling in for Alan at Hooper's Store while he went on vacation for a week. Unfortunately, however, after only the first episode was taped, Portman began losing her voice and was thus unable to continue. As a result, Gabi took over Hooper's Store for the remaining episodes that Natalie was supposed to appear in. Portman's appearance, in fact, clearly displays her ailing speech, although the two songs she sang in the episode were noticeably recorded during a separate session.
- In the early 1970s, the Muppet crew were looking for additional female performers, and Sonia Manzano - who was already a cast member at this point - auditioned. She admits that she wasn't able to master the various tasks involved in puppetry, though she did supply the voice for Smart Tina from the Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School inserts.
- Alaina Reed Hall, who played the role of Gordon's sister Olivia from 1976 until leaving in 1988note , was in talks to return to the series as Olivia during the late 2000s. Sadly, that possibility was scuttled when Hall lost her battle with breast cancer in 2009.
- Pam Arciero almost didn't get cast as Grundgetta. She mentioned how Camille Bonora was almost cast in the role.
- The song "You And You And Me" still has Elmo as originally planned, but it was originally going to have Ernie and Telly as the other two characters, unlike the finalized version of the song using Zoe and Grover.
- There was a time in which Disney could've owned the Sesame Street Muppets, as back when Jim Henson was planning to sell his company to Disney in the late 1980s, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner really wanted to buy the Sesame Street Muppets from Henson, viewing them as a viable asset due to how iconic they are. However, Jim Henson refused to include them in the deal, as he wanted to give the rights to the Children's Television Workshop (the producers of the show) to maintain their public television roots. Henson's refusal to sell the Sesame Street Muppets to Disney and the conflicts that ensued because of it was one of the major reasons why the deal fell through (the other major factor being Jim Henson's death in 1990). The rights to the Sesame Street Muppets were ultimately given to the Children's Television Workshop (later renamed to Sesame Workshop) after Henson passed away.note
