Emilio Delgado, the actor who starred in Sesame Street for over 40 years, has died. He was 81 years old.
Delgado died Thursday in New York after battling cancer, his wife Carol Delgado told The Associated Press.
In a statement sent to The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Attermann, CEO of A3 Artists Agency, said of Delgado’s passing, “Emilio was a huge talent who brought so much joy and smiles to his fans. He will be missed by many and we know his legacy will live on.”
A spokesman for About Artists told THR that Delgado has been battling multiple myeloma and is looking forward to returning to work after his stem cell transplant. “He had a beautiful soul,” they said. “The world is not the same without Emilio.”
The Mexican-American actor is best known for his role as Luis Rodriguez on the PBS series Sesame Street, singing the owner of a nearby Fix-It store. He debuted on the show in 1971 and remained a series regular until 2016, setting the record for the longest-running Mexican-American role on a television series, as noted in Biography of Delgado on Twitter.
In an interview with The Houston Chronicle published in 2020, Delgado reflected on the importance of his role on Sesame Street amid the absence of Hispanics on screen and stereotypical portrayals.
“My whole professional life, I’ve been trying to be somewhere where I could change that, whether I was talking about it or trying to get into a project that would make Latinos look good,” Delgado told The Houston Chronicle. “That’s why Sesame Street was such a good thing. For the first time on television, Hispanics were shown as real people.
He added: “We were not drug addicts. We were not maids or prostitutes, as we were shown on television in the movies. Here on Sesame Street, there were different people who spoke different languages and ate interesting food, and they were all Americans.”
Delgado was born in 1940 in Calexico, California. The career of a professional actor began in 1968 when he worked on the Mexican-American soap opera Cancion De La Raza. Outside of Sesame Street, Delgado was a regular on The Lou Grant Show from 1979 to 1982. Delgado has also appeared in Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, Police Story and I Won’t Fight Forever No More. Other television and film credits include Get Down, House of Cards, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, The Case of You, and The Michael J. Fox Show.
Delgado has narrated the films The Bravest Knight, Red Dead Redemption II, and narrated audiobooks on Audible.
Behind the scenes, Delgado has also acted in theatrical productions, most recently in The New Quixote, a film adaptation of Don Quixote. He was Artistic Director of the Barrio Theater Ensemble in East Los Angeles.
Earlier this year, Delgado joined the board of directors of the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, New Jersey’s community activist center for LGBTQ youth.
According to his biography on the Rustin Center website, Delgado’s awards include the Impact Awards from the National Latin American Media Coalition, and on October 15, 2019, “Emilio Delgado Day” was declared in New York City.
19:34: Updated with a statement from About Artists.