Noel MacNeal played Bear from "Bear in the Big Blue House." The incredibly popular kid's show aired on Disney from 1997 to 2006. Today, Noel is still a puppeteer and is working on his own show "The Show Me Show," which focuses on kids with autism and special needs. Following is a transcript of the video.
Noel MacNeal: Hi I am Noel MacNeal, I am a puppeteer, yes, it's a weird word.
Noel played the bear from "Bear in the Big Blue House." It aired on Disney from 1997 to 2006.
MacNeal: This happened back in 1997 so I actually went in that morning to audition for another character for a game show that they were trying to develop. I got a call from Henson saying please come back 'cause we want you to audition for this other character. I went in and I put on what's called the helix, it's like the understructure with the hoop rings and the netting and this foam head and then I realized wait a minute it is quarter to five, this is a courtesy, you're not gonna get this, so I just said forget it you know what I'm just gonna have fun. Come Monday around six o'clock, just shy of six o'clock, that's when I got the call saying Noel you got the part and I was like what? And it's like yep, so that's how it happened.
Playing the bear was harder than it looked.
MacNeal: When you're inside you put your right arm up through the neck and into the head and you put your hand inside the mouth so that the lower thumb is his lower jaw and this is up here and it was like a little trigger for me to do his eyebrows. Then my left hand was in his left arm and there was a tiny little string, a monofilament that went up to a little ring in his neck that came down the other side to the right hand which was stuffed so whenever I moved this hand this one would move automatically especially when he was dancing.
Give a guess, how hot was it inside? I just put in a little thermometer one time so it got up to like about 92 degrees but it's dry heat and the season, especially the first season, they would crank up the air conditioning in the studio so it would be freezing and people would always complain about it but it had to offset the fact that the guy in the bear suit might pass out so they'd just crank up the air conditioning.
Mitchell Kriegman who created the show just had it so that Bear would just like sniff the camera. I came up with him really jamming it in and pulling it back out which kids always reacted to in fact one message I got was from a mom of a kid who was severely handicapped and had not really responded even by the age of two and she was watching the show and as soon as Bear like jammed his nose into the camera to sniff, that's when she jumped back and it was the first time she had actually reacted to the outside world and they were thrilled beyond measure so yeah, sniffing can benefit the world.
I've been getting lots of fan email from the parents and from the kids of autism and special needs who've grown up with Bear and how they said it's still comforting for them and I realized today there's no show like that where it's just sincere, it's just gentle, and it's just as comforting as Bear was, it's not too loud, it's not in your face, well except for when he sniffs the camera. So then I've been trying to develop my show called the Show Me Show for kids with autism and special needs to kinda fill that niche 'cause I know for a fact that the kid networks right now aren't gonna do that, so.