How ‘Sesame Street’ star Sherrie Westin saved lives during the withdrawal from Afghanistan
You can count on him.
Page Six learned that the news manager worked for 48 hours straight to rescue dozens of “Sesame Street” actors who were trapped in Kabul during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Exec Sherrie Westin was credited with single-handedly saving the lives of her team in the operation, later dubbed “Operation Big Bird,” it has been revealed.
The Afghan version of the show, “Baghch-e-Simsim,” has been broadcast nationally since 2011, and has been so popular with Afghans — that the show has reportedly become a target of the Taliban, which it despises because it teaches young girls to read.
One of its editors was killed in a suicide bombing targeting the media in 2016.
We are told that in 2017, more than 80% of children with access to TV were watching the show, about 3 million children. At the time, 60% of the youth in the country – two-thirds of them girls – could not finish school, so the show was an important tool in filling that gap.
Along with many of the characters beloved by American children, the show followed Zari, a 6-year-old Muppet girl, and her 4-year-old brother Zeerak.
Amid memorable scenes of Americans and Afghans desperately trying to flee the country during President Joe Biden’s resignation, the “Sesame Street” crew — including a nine-month-pregnant doll behind Zari — boarded a bus to Kabul airport.
But they were denied entry to the airport to board one of the last flights out of the country.
We are told that the CEO of “Sesame Workshop” Westin, based in the US, spent 48 hours directly communicating with the highest levels of the US military to save their lives. (He has extensive connections with government in one way or another, having served as Assistant to the President in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under George HW Bush, and as a current member of the Think Tank Council on Foreign Relations).
Although we’re told Westin refuses to accept credit for the project, military figures say he’s responsible for the team’s survival today.
This saga was revealed this week by film producer Perri Peltz when he presented the Champions of Literacy award to Westin at the Literacy Partners show at Pier 60. Peltz says he is in the process of making a documentary about this episode.
