‘Sesame Street’ Writer Reveals The Truth About Bert & Ernie’s ‘Loving’ Relationship!

UPDATE (11:26 A.M. PST): Sesame Street responded to Saltzman’s comments, reiterating that Bert and Ernie are just “good friends.” A statement shared on the show’s official Twitter account reads:
https://twitter.com/SesameWorkshop/status/1042117602678587395

Sesame Street may not see Bert and Ernie as anything more than “best friends,” but at least one of the show’s writers did!
In an interview with Queerty, Mark Saltzman revealed that he wrote the beloved muppet pair as a gay couple, admitting that the two characters reflected his own same-sex relationship at the time.
Related: Kirstie Alley Says John Travolta Can’t Be Gay!
The writer, who joined the Sesame Street team in 1984, says he wrote Bert and Ernie as a loving couple because there was no other way for him to portray them, explaining:

“I remember one time a preschooler (in San Francisco) turned to her mum and asked ‘Are Bert and Ernie lovers?’ 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 contextualise them.”

Like most of the LGBT community, Saltzman and the other writers definitely didn’t see Bert and Ernie as friends.
In fact, he says most of the writers agreed that the muppet couple mirrored Saltzman’s own dynamic with his then-partner, film editor Arnold Glassman, revealing:

“Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor — if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paperclips and organisation? 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.”

Well, there you have it. Bert and Ernie are the gay icons the LGBT community always knew they were.
[Image via Sesame Street/YouTube.]