NEED TO KNOW
Dora the Explorer wasn’t always the adorable little girl we know her to be.
Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh Valdes, who created the iconic preschool series 25 years ago, opened up to Today about all the versions of the character they tried before landing on what fans are now familiar with.
“There were a couple of iterations before Dora was Dora. She was Tess. She was almost a motion capture. She had a little mouse that lived in her pocket,” Walsh Valdes recounted. “But there were some things that stayed the same throughout, like that essence of her character. We tried to hold on to that.”
Gifford added that the lead character was also almost a cat, a bunny or a red-headed little girl.
Paramount+
Gifford also revealed that Dora wasn’t initially Latina.
He explained that it was Nickelodeon’s suggestion to make the lead character Latina.
“Our first reaction was, ‘Oh, boy, what a great idea!'” he remembered, adding that he thought “the representation is not there on air” at the time.
He recalled how he and Walsh Valdes brought in Latino writers and supervisors as well as experts in Latin culture to help them. They even traveled to Latin America themselves to learn firsthand.
“And in doing that, I think that’s when the character came to be who she was,” Gifford detailed. “Because it was about using a second language to make friends, to solve problems, to build bridges.”
Nickelodeon
Walsh Valdes recalled how Dora the Explorer was an immediate hit when she and Gifford first showed it to a group of kids.
“They went bonkers,” she said. “When the executives saw kids screaming and shouting and playing backpack and stuff, all resistance melted away.”
The rest was history, as Dora the Explorer has been translated into 32 languages and seen in more than 150 countries and territories around the world since its launch on Aug. 14, 2000, according to Nickelodeon.
In addition to the show’s original eight-season run, during which it won an Emmy, Peabody and more accolades, Dora has become a franchise.
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There’s a sequel series, a spin-off series and two feature films — not to mention all the books, toys and video games centered around Dora and her adventures.
A reboot series, titled Dora, is currently streaming on Paramount+.
