The actor, who starred in his own Nickelodeon series Weinerville and featured regularly on Figure It Out, is no stranger to Dora the Explorer, having voiced characters such as Map, Swiper the Fox and the Fiesta Trio on Nickelodeon's beloved animated preschool series. He reprised his role as the Map on Dora spin-offs Go, Diego! Go! and Dora and Friends: Into the City!, in which he also voiced characters such as the Booby Birds in the former, and got an upgrade as the 'Map App' in the latter.
In an interview the Stamford Comedian told The Jewish Link “I am blessed to be in the upcoming Dora the Explorer action movie this summer. I am The Map!”
Dora and the Lost City of Gold, from Paramount Players and Nickelodeon Movies, swings into theatres on Wednesday, July 31, 2019!
Stamford community member Marc Weiner created and hosted the ’90s Nickelodeon television series Weinerville. It premiered in July 1993 and ended production a year later, but continued to be shown in reruns on the network until June 1997. The show was set around a giant puppet stage of a mythical city called Weinerville.
“As a kid, I always enjoyed making people laugh,” reminisced Weiner. “In 1973, while I was crewing on a Hudson River Sloop named Clearwater, I would juggle fruit from the lunches of kids who were visiting the boat and I enjoyed making them laugh. I then took a ‘clowning and mime’ course and started street performing in Boston and then NYC.”
As a street performer, he worked side-by-side with future star Robin Williams, an improv comic at the time. In 1981, Weiner was a writer for and an occasional actor on NBC’s Saturday Night Live series. From there, he also appeared on other networks, including Comedy Central, HBO and Showtime, as well as other TV series including Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide and Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast. In 1994, Weiner co-hosted the East Coast portion of that year’s Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. As he became more religiously observant, he developed his Jewish stand-up routines.
“I had created so many puppets and they needed a town to live in,” explains Weiner on what inspired him to create his eponymous fictional town, Weinerville. “I made a pilot for Comedy Channel, but it tested too young for their target audience. However, my manager, Lee Kernis, took it to Nickelodeon, they loved it and we created the Weinerville series. Weinerville is a fun town filled with my puppets and my many characters. People come to get ‘weinerized’ or turned into 1/2 human-1/2 puppet characters, to help solve a situation in each episode by playing a fun carnival game.”
Weiner said the message of the show was “to have fun, save the environment and be nice to each other.” Since the cancellation of the show, the Weinerville concept had some TV movie specials on Chanukah, New Year’s Eve and the 1996 elections. Weiner’s characters and episodes can still been seen on YouTube.
Since working on Weinerville, Weiner’s career has continued to grow. “I am also a Nonviolent Communication trainer,” described Weiner. “I teach people of all ages empathy skills in order to learn how to get along better with themselves and others. I am part of a team of Jews who go into the Riker’s Island prison on the Jewish holidays to entertain and visit prisoners. I do some comedy and teach them nonviolent communication with my Empathy Labyrinth. Those interested can check my website, www.theempathylabyrinth.com.” Proud to be part of the Stamford Jewish community, Weiner enjoys teaching puppetry and empathy skills for preschool and elementary students of Stamford’s Jewish schools.
Many fans of children’s television do not realize how well they know Weiner. “I have been working for Nick Jr. on Dora the Explorer for over 19 years. I am the voice of ‘The Map,’ ‘Swiper the Fox’ and many other characters on the show.”
In Dora and the Lost City of Gold, having spent most of her life exploring the jungle with her parents, nothing could prepare Dora (Isabela Moner) for her most dangerous adventure ever – High School. Always the explorer, Dora quickly finds herself leading Boots (her best friend, a monkey, voiced by Danny Trejo), Diego (Jeffrey Wahlberg), a mysterious jungle inhabitant (Eugenio Derbez), and a rag tag group of teens on a live-action adventure to save her parents (Eva Longoria, Michael Peña) and solve the impossible mystery behind a lost city of gold.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold is directed by James Bobin, produced by Christopher Robin producer Kristin Burr, who is joined by longtime Bobin associate, executive producer John G. Scotti (The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted, Alice Through the Looking Glass) as well as executive producers Julia Pistor (The Spiderwick Chronicles, A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Eugenio Derbez. Tom Wheeler wrote the story, and Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson penned the screenplay. Walden Media is co-financing and co-producing the film with Paramount.
11-time Emmy and four-time BAFTA nominee director James Bobin (Alice Through the Looking Glass) has assembled a cast of diverse superstars to star in the movie, including: Isabela Moner (100 Things to Do Before High School, Legends of the Hidden Temple, Transformers: The Last Knight) as Dora, Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives, Overboard) and Michael Peña, who play the parents of the titular character; Eugenio Derbez (Overboard, Instructions Not Included; How to Be A Latin Lover), who plays Alejandro, a mysterious jungle inhabitant who tries to protect the teenagers from the marauders; Jeffrey Wahlberg (Future World, Ballers, Counterpart, Reefa) in the role of cousin Diego; Nicholas Coombe (Spy Kids: Mission Control, Midnight Sun) as Randy, a fellow high schooler who develops an immediate crush on Dora; Madeleine Madden (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Tidelands) as the school’s snooty class president, Sammy; Academy Award nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel, Amores Perros, Thor, The 33) as Dora’s grandma, Abuelita Valerie; Temuera Morrison (Green Lantern, Moana), who will play the role of Powell; Q’orianka Kilcher (The Alienist), who will play Inca Princess Kawillaka; Pia Miller (Home and Away) as Dora's aunt Mami; Madelyn Miranda, who portrays Young Dora; Benicio del Toro as the voice of Swiper the fox, and Danny Trejo as the voice of Boots the Monkey.
More Nick: Isabela Moner Adopts Three-Legged Dog She Found Whilst Filming 'Dora And The Lost City Of Gold' in Australia!
Originally published: Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 8:49pm BST.
Additional sources: IMDb, Dora the Explorer Wiki, Google.co.uk.
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