The Wiggles are beloved by fans all over the world, and they aren't showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. Unfortunately, a beloved member of the cast is stepping away though, as Yellow Wiggle Emma Watkins recently revealed that she will be pursuing some other things and will no longer be the group's Yellow Wiggle after the end of the year. Stepping in as the new Yellow Wiggle is Tsehay Hawkins, who recently debuted as a Wiggle on Fruit Salad TV but will now be part of the core four Wiggles moving forward. ComicBook.com had a chance to talk to both Emma and Tsehay about why Emma decided to step away, how Tsehay found out about becoming the new Yellow Wiggle, and more, and you can watch part of our interview in the video above as well.
The Wiggles are more popular than ever and Emma has loved and continues to love being a part of the group, so it wasn't an easy decision to leave. However, there are also some things that she hasn't had the time to pursue, and she is excited to finally give those pursuits some attention.
"I think during the pandemic, it's really been a time for so many people to reflect on their current situation whether that's family or work or life or friends or the country that they live in," Watkins said. "And so really for us we absolutely relish being able to tour at 80% of the year at all times and myself, Lachy, Simon, and Anthony have been touring together for 10 years now. And so it kind of feels like that was five minutes ago and then it feels like 50 years, it just has been such an incredible chapter, and really now for the last almost 18 months we haven't toured very much at all and so we've been able to spend a bit more time at home and I have been concurrently studying at university the whole time I've been with The Wiggles."
"So it has given me a time to reflect on my research and the work that I'm wanting to continue still in media, but using dance and sign language as my two passions. And I think I just realized that I really wanted to finish up that study properly and so I felt like this was the right time considering that we hadn't been touring for a while," Watkins said. "And so we've had the pleasure of working with Tsehay for a couple of years now as part of our cast and being a Wiggly dancer and on stage and in some of our videos, and so it really felt like a great time to introduce Tsehay to The Wiggly family and for us to be able to share this beautiful spirit and human and just wonderful dancer with the world. It's kind of been an organic process and look, I'm really happy to introduce you to Tsehay here today, who is just beautiful."
Tsehay couldn't be more thrilled to be a part of this amazing group and says the whole process of finding out was pretty surreal.
"Everything was really crazy, it was all very quick and they told me on a Zoom call, they were like 'so we got some exciting news'. I was like oh! This is cool, and they were like 'you are going to be the new Yellow Wiggle'. And I was like, oh my gosh! It was surreal honestly," Hawkins said.
Emma is sticking around through the remainder of the year, but after that, it's unknown if she will pop back in for appearances here and there. The good news is that we've seen some of the original members of the group come back from time to time, both in videos and in performances, so we had to ask if she would be willing to pop in for appearances in the future.
"I would love to pop in, I really just, I'm ready to learn some more dance moves from Tsehay to be honest so I'm looking forward to that," Watkins said. "I think I'll need to go and do my research project and then come back and actually get lessons from Tsehay about how I can be a better Latin dancer."
If you've seen one of Tsehay's videos as part of The Wiggles, you will quickly see just how talented a dancer she is. She actually discovered her love of dancing from watching The Wiggles, and since then she's become experienced in a number of different dance styles and genres, and all of that will undoubtedly come in handy as the Yellow Wiggle.
"Well, obviously The Wiggles started me dancing because that's what I used to dance around the house to," Hawkins said. "I love the upbeat music and all the colors, so I started dancing through the commercial styles with jazz and then ballet and then tap, and then I started hip-hop later as I grew. And then when I was five we went to a lot of African festivals, my parents would bring me with the adoption group and I was inspired by their dancing on stage and they had like audience participation so I went on stage and started doing Eskista, which is the Ethiopian cultural dancing."
"And they're like you should go into it, you should start learning it. So my parents put me into Ethiopian, West African dance classes and then we adopted my little brother from Colombia and I was obsessed with their cultural dancing called Cumbia with the dresses. And I was like oh my gosh, I love that, that's stunning. So when we went back from Colombia, we found a little dance studio in Sydney and I went there and the older kids did salsa and I saw all the body movement, I was like oh my that's what I want to do. So I started learning salsa and with my commercial I kept it because I go to a full-time dance school and then I do salsa on the weekends. And MY dad sings basically 24/7," Hawkins said.
As for Emma, she has always given a spotlight to Auslan during her time in The Wiggles, and while she won't be spotlighting it in Wiggles videos for a while, she will still be working to spread more awareness about it and working with the deaf community as a whole.
"I grew up with some beautiful deaf friends and sign language had been part of my childhood just as much as dance and music, and it's something that always fascinated me because I loved to dance and I loved using my body for expression. And so over the years, I signed casually with my friends using Auslan, Australian Sign Language. And really in the last 10 years, I've kind of been more involved with the deaf community and trying to discover how us as a hearing community actually contribute in a positive way to the community and figure out how can we include sign language and visual communication more in our media to make everything slightly more accessible than it is at the moment," Watkins said. "In Australia, it's not as supported, the deaf community as it is in North America so really we've got a long way to go but I'm really looking forward to hopefully making a bit of a gateway and providing some more awareness about our language, which is actually very special to Australia. Auslan is only really used in Australia so why not embrace it and celebrate it?"
You can watch Emma, Tsehay, and the rest of The Wiggles through their videos and episodes of Fruit Salad TV, which are all located on their YouTube channel. You can also find them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
What do you love most about The Wiggles? Let us know in the comments or by letting me know on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
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