Actor who plays iconic TV character looks VERY different off-screen… amid rumors his show faces ax

He plays one of the most iconic characters in US television history… but if you passed him on the street, you likely wouldn’t give him a second glance.

Matthew Vogel, 54 – the performer better known as Sesame Street’s Big Bird – has brought joy to millions of American children. 

But there are growing fears that laughter could be brought to an abrupt halt, as President Trump pledged to strip Sesame Street broadcaster PBS of its funding. 

The threat even led Democrats in Washington to display signs reading ‘Fire Elon, Save Elmo’ at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, as outrage grew that the show could be taken off the air for the first time since its inception in 1969. 

Vogel – who also voices Kermit the Frog and Sesame Street’s The Count  – appeared relaxed about the future during a chat with DailyMail.com outside his stunning $1.4 million Connecticut home. 

The friendly star said he was ‘not concerned’ by Trump’s latest antics and noted that Sesame Street could survive without funding from taxpayers. 

He is the second actor to play Big Bird. Caroll Spinney was the first to do so and held the role between Sesame Street’s inception in 1969 and his retirement in 2018.

Spinney died in 2019 aged 85.  

The US government ponies up only about four percent of Sesame Street’s funding, according to tax filings first reported by the Hollywood Reporter. 

Last year HBO, which helped fund Sesame Street, ended its deal with PBS, amid claims the show had become tired. 

The fate of Sesame Street hit the spotlight this week as Trump said he would be ‘honored’ to defund PBS as well as NPR, accusing the taxpayer funded outlets of anti-conservative bias. 

The CEOs of both stations appeared on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to defend their platforms, facing a grilling from a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing presided over by Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

While Greene unleashed on the executives for their perceived ‘communist agenda’, they did receive some support from Democrats who used the potential end of one of America’s best loved children’s shows to their advantage. 

‘To borrow a phrase from ‘Sesame Street,’ the letter of the day is C, and it stands for ‘corruption,’ Rep. Greg Casar said during the hearing. 

Republicans introduced a bill to pull government funding from the two outlets after the hearings, saying they no longer deserve to be taxpayer-funded over an alleged liberal bias. 

The bill, introduced by Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, is pointedly titled ‘No Partisan Radio and Partisan Broadcasting Services Act’ – a clear play on the acronyms used for both organizations.

Jackson himself told Fox it would fully cut off any government funding for both NPR and PBS, if passed, declaring that ‘hardworking Americans are sick of footing the bill.’ 

‘It’s time to cut them off and stop forcing taxpayers to pay for their liberal lies,’ he said. 

On Tuesday, Trump said more of the same, admitting he ‘would love to see’ funding stripped from the two entities. 

During the hearing, NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher made a startling admission as she owned up to not giving the Hunter Biden laptop story the coverage it deserved.  

Maher, a progressive who previously headed Wikipedia before starting at NPR last year, made the admission after being grilled relentlessly by Greene about the broadcaster’s alleged bias.

‘I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively or sooner,’ Maher said Wednesday. 

At another moment, Greene confronted Maher on some of her more opinionated comments, including social media posts branding Donald Trump as a ‘racist’ and ‘sociopath’ in 2020.

When asked by GOP Rep. Tim Burchett about such tweets, Maher said: ‘I regret [them] today.’