A Muppet for All Reasons
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TJ, on the Sesame Street set (Photo courtesy of Sesame Workshop/Photo by Zach Hyman)
It's not farfetched to treat a Muppet as a human being since such iconic puppets as Kermit the Frog, Elmo, and TJ’s pal, Ji-Young, age seven, take on a life of their own each time they grace the screen. They have distinct personalities, voices and physical traits.
Quest for Specificity Molds a Four-Year-Old with a Past
Rosemary Palacios, Sesame Workshop Director of Talent Outreach, Inclusion and Content Development, played a large role in inventing TJ’s backstory as a kuya or older brother to his baby sister. He’s learning Tagalog from his grandparents, who live on the ground floor below his family’s apartment. “He’s very much a person and is curious like a four-year-old. And he’s not shy about asking questions.”
Rosemary Palacios, Sesame Workshop Director of Talent Outreach, Inclusion and Content Development, at the Gracies Awards (Photo courtesy of Rosemary Palacios)
Palacios is Rosemary's married name. She's 35 years old and her maiden name is Espina like her father, Marianito Espina, from Cebu and her late mother Rhoda Villar Espina from Bulacan.
In 2021, Palacios recounts, “Sesame Workshop created Ji-Young as a Korean Muppet. We then wanted to make sure we also had brown Asians represented. Specifically, in the spectrum of representation, it was important to include a Southeast Asian, and the Philippines really stood out. As a Fil-Am, I could speak authentically to Filipinos.”
She adds “As far as what makes TJ inherently Filipino, he loves his Lola and enjoys everything that ties him to her.”
The Sesame Workshop diversity specialist admits weeping when she saw the new Muppet’s facial features that reminded her of her brother, also named TJ, and their late mother. She gushes, “Bobby did such a great job with TJ’s brown skin and wide nose.”
Rosemary’s brother TJ and their mother Rhoda (Photo courtesy of Rosemary Palacios)
A Lifechanging Genre for a Respected Animator
TJ was designed by Bobby Pontillas, an animator, character designer, art director and director with impressive stints at Disney, Blue Sky, and ArenaNet, among other animation and game studios.
Bobby Pontillas
“I came up at Disney where I was animating on Frozen. My animations changed one hundred percent because of TJ. I left the project a little while to make a short film.” One Small Step was the film that earned Pontillas an Oscar nomination for Director in the Short Film category. The film honors his single mother and career Navy veteran, Corazon Pontillas, who in 1989, emigrated from Nabeua, Camarines Sur to Bremerton, Washington. Bobby Pontillas, age 42, was born in Guam.
During that whirlwind period of the Academy Award nomination and TJ video, “The Filipino community came out in droves to support me. After that, I knew I wanted to lean into Filipino stories, which, as a first-generation Fil-Am, I’m still trying to figure out myself.”
Looking back a few years, Pontillas remembers meeting Palacios while facilitating a panel on Filipinos in Hollywood. His name immediately came to mind when Palacios needed a designer for TJ, though Pontillas had little experience with puppet design. “I had designed for CGI (computer-generated imagery) and animation at Disney and a few other studios. Basically, design is design whether it’s puppets or drawings,” insists Pontillas.
“This was a different venue for me when I began meeting with Louis Mitchell (Creative Director of Character Design of Sesame Workshop). I started by looking at Ji-Young as I was guided by the principle of design based on what came before. All the technicalities from the way the eyes look to the way the hair is treated all add up to the Muppet’s personality.”
An Outsider Influences a Filipino Insider
TJ (Photo Courtesy of Sesame Workshop/Photo by John Barrett)
Mitchell posed questions to help Pontillas shape TJ’s physiognomy. “Louis wanted to know what kinds of features Filipinos would identify in a Filipino character. After the story aired, the feedback from the community was, ‘Look, that’s me.’ That’s the ultimate compliment to a designer.”
He revealed a secondary compliment of a fan contacting him for fashion tips on a Halloween outfit to cosplay TJ. “He was named TJ, too. He wanted to know where he could get a yellow hoodie with brown stripes like TJ. I told him, how would I know that?” Pontillas finally advised, “Go look on Ebay.”
Pontillas’ vision for TJ materialized in his debut with the Indian-American actor Kal Penn. “When TJ tells Kal Penn about his Lola, he feels like I felt as a kid. He’s caught between two worlds: America and the Philippines. He has to navigate who he is. TJ moves the preschool viewer to ask, ‘How do I identify myself?’” To that point, Pontillas says, “There’s so much to unpack like why he’s not speaking in a Filipino accent. You see his relationship with his grandmother, who belongs to a generation twice removed. We can relate because our Lolas also live with us while we’re growing up.”
More than Meets the Eye
Following a deceivingly simple script, the animator-designer observes other intentional details like “the way he looks at Kal Penn and says, ‘I’m learning Tagalog.’ He’s looking down because he’s not the most secure person in the world. He’s young with only four years of life experience. He hasn’t yet seen himself as he’ll eventually see himself later when he’s in school. TJ isn’t boisterous or outgoing, but his shyness represents Filipino kids as I remember myself. He says ‘Lola’ without translating what a Lola is. It’s natural for a small kid not to recognize Lola as a foreign word. It’s as if Lola is a name. So much is going on.”
Palacios follows, “Bobby was so thoughtful to make something that looks like a Filipino nose that’s also a Muppet nose. You want it to feel true to a person and still exist in this world of Muppets.”
TJ’s nose is more button than aquiline because Palacios thumbed her nose at the Filipino ideal of mestiza beauty. “My mom pinched my nose growing up. She, herself, had a crease on her nose from being pinched so much.”
Only the best of Filipino culture is portrayed in the new Muppet. Pontillas realizes, “Characters like TJ make children want to examine their own culture. They’re moved to ask questions like ‘Who’s my Lola? Where did I come from?’ There comes a time in our lives when we want to learn more about our culture. That’s what’s so important about these stories.”
Palacios elaborated some more on the complexities of Muppet design. “We really did use Bobby’s design as a roadmap. Every aspect of this character had to be defined. We were picking from swatches of dye for the proper felt for TJ’s skin tone. We were picking from different nose options in size and color and seeing how it worked against the skin tone itself.”
About that Wig
“And then there’s the wig.” She pauses for the pièce de resistance. “It was tough to find the wig that’s right for TJ. Then came the challenge of styling it, trying to get that wig under control. For real authenticity, we had to make it look like Bobby’s design.”
She goes on to say, “Everything is under high scrutiny when we work with the Henson Group. The skin tone is Bobby’s skin tone. Finding the right pantone is hard enough for people. We have to consider the way the light hits your face and the interplay with shadows. There’s not just one color that represents it perfectly.”
In creating a Muppet, Palacios says, “It’s even harder to find a felt in the right shade of brown under the light of the studio. Every time they brought swatches of brown, we had to make sure we stick with what Bobby was recommending. A shade of brown might not be deep enough. The design team went back to the drawing board a few times to make sure they got it right.”
TJ is the proverbial big fish in a small pond. Becoming a principal character in the Muppet universe is an astonishing feat because there aren’t as many stories crisscrossing each other and diluting the pond as in the ubiquitous Marvel Universe. Pontillas was only partially facetious when he suggests, “Every time TJ makes an appearance on the TV screen, it’ll be like a Manny Pacquiao match. Daly City shuts down, nobody goes to church, the malls are empty.”
Based on the buzz TJ created in the national and international media, Pontillas’ exaggeration today might not sound like hyperbole tomorrow.
Anthony Maddela contributes articles and profiles on Fil-Ams who stand out for their talent, community work and artistry primarily in California. He also enjoys writing fiction and is a freelance copywriter. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
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