“I remember feeling not so sad about it,” says Herles, now 34 and living with her husband on Long Island’s southern shore, still with an uncanny resemblance to Dora — more smile than voice. “We knew that time was eventually going to come, but it was such a transitional period in my life. Having this identity of being Dora since I was 7 — I didn’t know who I was outside of that.”
So Herles went to find out who she was. She attended Pace University on Manhattan’s downtown campus, commuting from her hometown of Deer Park, Long Island; she made friends. One of them found out she had been Dora and told a bunch of other people, but it didn’t really matter, Herles says. Her peers had their own lives and didn’t care all that much that she voiced an iconic children’s television figure for half of her adolescence. Herles majored in communications and was one credit shy of minoring in Latin American Studies. She worked all the time — at the mall, restaurants and gyms, in hospitality. She still took acting classes, did a few commercials and auditioned for a role here and there, voice-over mostly. While working at the Equinox Hotels corporate office, she parlayed an administrative gig into a spot on the interior design team for the new hotel the company was building in Hudson Yards. “It’s still one of my biggest accomplishments,” she says.
Now, 15 years after she hung up Dora’s backpack, Herles is stepping back into Dora’s world — this time as Mami. The Paramount Plus reboot, titled “Dora,” is the fourth series in the franchise and promises a refreshed, vibrant, 3D version of Dora and her pals, with Diana Zermeño as the spunky star who still goes on adventures, tells Swiper, “No swiping!” asks Map for directions, and teaches viewers Spanish.
“I know I lost the passion for acting in my early 20s,” Herles says, “and once I got this opportunity and this door opened — which they don’t open often in this industry — I really did have to think to myself, ‘Is this something that I want?’ When I said yes, and I got the part, all those memories came flooding back. I remember stepping into the booth for the first time [when I was 7] to record for the show, and I never felt so safe.”
Mami was around in Herles’s days on the show, but now she and Papi — and Dora’s twin baby siblings — are a bigger part of the story. Abuela, too, is still there to give big hugs and read Dora stories that feed her adventurous spirit. What Herles feels is the biggest difference, though, is a clear ethnic origin for Dora. In the original show, Dora was pan-Latina in an effort, Herles speculates, to be more inclusive. In the new show, Dora is Peruvian on Mami’s side, and Mexican and Cuban on Papi’s.
“That’s important because a lot of us Latinos, we’re multicultural,” says Herles, whose parents emigrated from Peru in 1982. “They’re not just from one country. When ‘Dora the Explorer’ first came out, she was like, ‘Hey! I’m a Latina girl and I’m here to share everything and to connect with my Latina community and to bring in anyone else in who wants to learn Spanish!’ [The point was] to bring everyone together, not have that specificity. I like how that’s evolved.”
After emigrating from Lima, Herles’s parents settled in Queens. Growing up in a Latin household with an older brother, Herles was taught that family is everything. She was proud of where her family came from, of her identity as a Peruvian American. Her brother, though, was the first to tell her to her face that Dora’s voice was annoying.
“I laugh because I still find it funny now,” says Herles, splashing that wide smile. “Dora, as loved and iconic as she is, she’s very easy to make fun of. I have seen some, but I know there are so many iterations of people doing funny things on Dora, making fun of her pauses and stuff. And sure, people write comments sometimes on social media, but I just laugh it off. I mean, in a sense, I get it.”
For Herles there is no need to dwell on this old iteration of herself. She is ready for new adventures. Just like Dora.
