Miranda Barry has lived in Hudson for thirteen years, after moving from New York City with her wife. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hudson Area Library and serves on the Historic Preservation Commission. 

In this interview, Miranda relates her career in theater and television and her family’s deep roots in the entertainment industry; her grandfather, Philip Barry, was a playwright best known for The Philadelphia Story; her father an Emmy-winning producer; her mother an actress. After moving from New York to Los Angeles at the age of seven, she attended high school at an all-girl boarding school and completed her Bachelor’s at Stanford, where she was very active in the anti-war movement. She returned to New York to pursue acting, but found a job as a research assistant at the Children’s Television Workshop, the studio that ran Sesame Street. She continued to work in television research and development and eventually became the head of development for American Playhouse, an anthology series producing theatrical films for American television. After a brief move to London, she returned to America and developed the show Ghostwriter, an educational program for children in 1990 that was produced by Children’s Television Workshop. She continued to work in children’s programming and took a role as the creative director for Sesame Street, a position she held for seven years. Although initially reluctant to take the position due to political friction around Sesame Street at the time, she recalls that she enjoyed the position and the ability to work with creative, passionate people.

Miranda moved to Hudson in 2013 with her wife Charlotte, a literary agent. In the years since, Miranda has continued to assist Charlotte’s literary agency, assumed control over her grandfather Philip’s estate, and toured a theatrical adaptation of Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom, Lynda Blackman Lowery’s memoir of her experience as the youngest marcher in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March. At the Hudson Historic Preservation Commission, she hopes to find a balance between preserving the architecture of Hudson while making room for new developments, particularly affordable housing. 

She discusses housing and capital as the biggest problems facing Hudson, and hopes that the new mayoral administration will act appropriately. She reflects on her activism in the ‘60s, which was spurred on by the period of economic prosperity of her youth, and compares it to the insecurity and destabilization faced by young people in the present day. She ends the interview urging young activists to build community with the people around them and take care of their friends and families. 

This interview was recorded for the Hudson Area Library's LGBTQ+ Collection in collaboration with Outhudson and with support from The Spark of Hudson and John Schobel.