The man behind Big Bird opens up about Sesame Street, Mitt Romney, and more

I began watching Sesame Street before I could even pronounce the show's title. So let me tell you: It is very, very surreal to have a conversation with Big Bird.

Of course, I didn't actually talk to Big Bird; I talked to Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who is on the verge of completing his 46th season playing Big Bird on Sesame Street. (He also plays Oscar the Grouch.) But in the course of our conversation, whenever Spinney naturally segued into the voices of Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch, some long-dormant part of my brain lit up. It felt like reconnecting with an old friend.

For millions of children — stretching back to 1969 and continuing today — Sesame Street has been an invaluable cultural touchstone. It's hard to imagine the children's television landscape without it, but when it first premiered, many experts were skeptical. "When we were first on the air, there was a lot of criticism of our show, saying, 'Children that young can't learn yet,' says Spinney. "And of course, they were wrong. We were right.'"

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The art of a puppeteer relies on avoiding the spotlight at all times — but over the past year, Spinney has been repeatedly singled out for recognition. There's the clever parodic short Big Birdman, which casts Spinney in the lead role of a riff on this year's Best Picture winner; the terrific new documentary I Am Big Bird, which explores Spinney's life and career in detail; and a slew of interviews like this one.

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This moment of mass cultural recognition for Caroll Spinney feels long overdue. For 46 years, Spinney has played the role of Big Bird — a deceptively complicated role that requires an intense level of focus and an unflappable ability to multitask. While wearing the Big Bird suit, Spinney keeps his right arm raised above his head, working the controls for Big Bird's mouth and eyes. Because there are no eyeholes, Spinney wears a harness — colloquially called the "electric bra" — that carries a monitor, allowing him to see what's happening outside the costume. And all the while, he's walking around and delivering lines in Big Bird's trademark, singsong voice.

Though he was a part of Sesame Street from the beginning, Big Bird didn't arrive fully formed. As Spinney explains it, Jim Henson's original conception for Big Bird was "a big, silly, goofy guy." In early appearances, "he was doing things like coming through the doorway and bumping his head on it, and saying, 'Stupid door!' We soon learned: We don't even use that word on Sesame Street. 'Dumb' and 'stupid' are forbidden words."

It's here that Spinney made his stamp on the series, developing Big Bird into Sesame Street's greatest and most enduring character. (Ignore anyone who argues for Elmo.) In the early years of Sesame Street, Spinney's great inspiration was that Big Bird should be childlike, not stupid — just curious and naive in the way that any average 6-year-old would be. "He's a child who's trying to learn, and trying to keep up with the children at home," says Spinney. "I like to have the children be a little bit brighter than Big Bird. I think it makes them feel good."

Spinney thinks a lot about the children who love Sesame Street, and how best he can serve them in his work as a puppeteer. "They kind of live in their own little world. Children, by the time they're six or seven, are catching on that these are grown-ups doing these things," he says. "I've always wanted not to spoil the illusion for children. Sometimes I'll meet someone and they'll say, 'You're the one that does Big Bird, aren't you?' And they'll sit down with their 4- or 5-year-old and say, 'This is the man who's inside Big Bird.' And I'll say: 'You're telling them something they do not want to hear.' Usually, I can see where they're heading, and say, 'Don't go there, please.' And usually, they'll do it anyway, and you see the dismay on the kid's face."

When confronted with these situations, Spinney does his best to minimize the damage. "I usually say, 'I'm a friend of Big Bird's. And he's even taught me how to sound like him!" he says . "And then I'll say, 'Hi, I'm Big Bird!" To me, it's like… my brother, he exposed the Santa Claus story to me when I was only five. Said, 'He's not real.' And I thought that was a little too soon. I remember my disappointment."

Spinney is also, unsurprisingly, enormously protective of Big Bird. In I Am Big Bird, Spinney describes a time when a group of college students tasked with protecting the Big Bird costume ripped off a large chunk of the feathers as souvenirs. When he discovered the damaged and discarded costume, he says, he wept as if one of his children had been attacked. Throughout our conversation, Spinney freely alternates between describing himself as Big Bird and referring to Big Bird in the third person, as if he were a close friend. He tells me a story about a time when he successfully refused to film a scene in which Big Bird threatened a character with kung fu, on the simple basis that "Big Bird wouldn't do that."

Over the years, Big Bird's pop-cultural ubiquity has taken Spinney across the world, and led to some very strange experiences When I asked about Big Bird's unlikely entrance into the 2012 presidential election — when Republican candidate Mitt Romney casually mentioned Big Bird in his justification for ending the government subsidy to PBS — Spinney laughed. "I don't think [Romney] did himself any favors there," he says.

In the end, Big Bird did issue a public comment — in his first-ever appearance on Saturday Night Live. "They called me up and said, 'Guess who wants you?'" says Spinney. "That [Saturday Night Live] bit was written by Seth Meyers. The only thing we changed is that he had me call him, 'Seth.' I said, 'No, Big Bird would call you Mr. Meyers.'"

These are the kinds of microscopic adjustments Spinney — drawing on decades of experience as Big Bird — is making all the time. It's a strange, fascinating chapter in Sesame Street history that shows just how versatile both Big Bird and his puppeteer really are. What's next? When asked about his future hopes for Big Bird, Spinney makes it clear that he has no plans to hang up the suit anytime soon. (One big item still on his wish list: a collaboration between Big Bird and Paul McCartney.) "[Playing Big Bird] is always very exciting to do, and I just want to keep going with it. And I think we will," he says. "My major goal is to do at least 50 years. I've only got four and a half left. Next Monday I'll finish the last episode of the 46th year of the show. We're still rolling."

I Am Big Bird is currently available in limited theaters and on video-on-demand. You can see it here.