You can count on her.
Page Six has learned that a media CEO worked 48 hours straight to rescue a busful of “Sesame Street” cast and crew who were stranded in Kabul when the US pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021.
Exec Sherrie Westin was credited with singlehandedly saving her team’s lives in the feat, later dubbed “Operation Big Bird,” it has been revealed.
An Afghan version of the show, “Baghch-e-Simsim,” had been airing in the nation since 2011, and had become a massive hit with the Afghan people — so much so that it is said that the production had become a target for the Taliban, which despised it because it was teaching young girls to read.
One of its editors was killed in a suicide bombing targeting media in 2016.
We’re told that by 2017, over 80% of children with access to TV were watching the program, about 3 million kids. At that time, 60% of youngesters in the country – two-thirds of them girls – were unable to complete school, so the show was a critical tool in filling that void.
As well as many of the characters beloved by American kids, the show followed Zari, a 6-year-old girl Muppet, and her 4-year-old brother Zeerak.
Amid the memorable scenes of Americans and Afghans alike desperately trying to flee the country during President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal, the “Sesame Street” team — including the nine-months-pregnant puppeteer behind Zari — boarded a bus and headed to Kabul airport.
But they were denied access to the airport to get onto one of the last flights out of the country.
We’re told “Sesame Workshop” CEO Westin, based in the US, spent 48 hours straight liaising with the highest levels of the US military to save their lives. (She has somewhat extensive government connections, having served as Assistant to the President of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under George H.W. Bush, and as a current member of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations).
While we’re told that Westin refuses to accept credit for the mission, military figures have claimed she’s responsible for the team being alive today.
The saga was revealed this week by filmmaker Perri Peltz while she was presenting the Champions of Literacy award to Westin at the Literacy Partners gala at Pier 60. Peltz says she’s in the process of making a documentary about the episode.
The post ‘Operation Big Bird’: How CEO saved lives of ‘Sesame Street’ team in Afghanistan after Taliban seized control of wartorn nation appeared first on Page Six.
