Sesame Street Writer Admits He Wrote Bert and Ernie As A Gay Couple

Mark Saltzman, an Emmy-winning writer who worked on Sesame Street, has admitted he wrote Bert and Ernie as a gay couple, Queerty reports.

“I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked “are Bert and Ernie lovers?”” he said, “and that, coming from a preschooler was fun.

“That got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it, and I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.’

Saltzman said a lot of what he wrote was inspired by his then-relationship with late documentary filmmaker Arnold Glassman.

“More than one person referred to Arnie and I as “Bert & Ernie”. Arnie as a film editor – if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester.

“So it was the Bert and Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches… Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert and Ernie dynamic.”

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