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Play School has announced a brand new host.

There’s a bear in there…

Logie winner Miranda Tapsell is joining the cast of our most illustrious children’s TV show.

Play School is preparing to celebrate 50 years on-air, making it the second-longest running kids’ TV show in the world.

Even better, they’re ringing in the new year with a brand-new presenter in Tapsell, 26, who is best known for her work in the Channel Nine drama Love Child and smash hit film The Sapphires.

Just as generations of kids grew up with Benita, Noni, and Monica, so will modern kids with Miranda Tapsell, Eddie Perfect, and Justine Clarke.

Tapsell won two Logies at this year’s awards for her role on Love Child. Image via Instagram.

Tapsell used her Logies acceptance speech to call for more diversity on local television.

“Put more beautiful people of colour on TV, and connect viewers in ways that transcend race and unite us. That’s the real team Australia,” she said in her speech which was given a standing ovation.

Tapsell has been standing up for herself since she was a schoolgirl, always questioning why there was one set of rules for some people and another for others.

Tapsell was born in Darwin and moved to West Arnhem Land when she was five.

She told BuzzFeed that she was inspired to give a speech to her class after one of her peers called her “half-caste”.

 

Miranda Tapsell. Image via Instagram.

“He asked why I called myself Aboriginal because my dad wasn’t Aboriginal and my mum was, and asked me why I chose my Aboriginal side over my non-indigenous side,” she said.

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“He naively thought that calling me half-caste was right, when I grew up knowing that was a bad name for Aboriginal people. I decided to speak up in front of my class about how I felt, and I asked the whole class why I had to define who I was and they didn’t.”

She was jeered by a group of boys, but years later, they got in touch with her.

Watch Miranda’s Logies acceptance speech… Post continues after video.

“These boys have come up to me later in life and said they really admired what I’ve achieved, and really admire that I got up that day.

“They said to me, ‘I learnt a lot from you that day in class and that you had the courage to do that, and you made me think about my attitude’. So for me it was worth it in the end, although it didn’t feel like it at the time.”

Miranda joins Big Ted, Jemima and the gang next year.