She was small enough that the puppet was almost her size. When little Shauna Rae smacked it, her stepdad Mark Schrankel did not raise his voice. He looked at the puppet and told her she had hurt it — and for the first time, the girl who had spent her childhood hitting people and laughing about it felt something else entirely: sorry for something smaller than herself. That puppet taught Shauna Rae the lesson no doctor, teacher, or television camera ever could.
The Day a Puppet Fought Back
Mark has never hidden where the puppets came from. According to reports, he began making them because of Shauna: the chemotherapy that treated her brain cancer at six months old had left her prone to anger, and as a small child she would hit people and laugh about it. A lecture would not have reached her. So Mark reached for a puppet instead. When she hit it, he told her she had hurt the puppet — and the regret on her face was real, and new. She had just learned what it felt like to hurt someone smaller than her, because for once, the smaller one was not her. At 3-foot-10, Shauna has spent her whole life being the smallest person in the room. Mark found the one way to show her the other side of that.
WhoBuddiez: The Troupe Rylee Named
The puppets did not stay a living-room trick. Mark runs a theatre troupe called WhoBuddiez — he is listed as its President and Owner — and his younger daughter Rylee inspired the name. On the show, he explained he was putting on a performance with Rylee’s help for the first time in two years. Fans asked whether the puppet business was his real job or just a side gig. Either way, it was real enough to raise a daughter.
The Dad Behind the Curtain
Mark is the steady one. He is the stepdad who asked, as Shauna headed out the door, “Who are you going to the brewery with? Who’s driving? When are you gonna be back?” In August 2022, he stood beside her at the county clerk’s office while she legally dropped her birth last name, Lesick — the name of her biological father, Scott Lesick, who, according to reports, has been out of contact since divorcing her mom Patty when Shauna was four. “Thank you @onthisdaycartoons for going with me today to change my name! One small change that means a lot to me!” Shauna wrote on Instagram. She later told Tamron Hall why it mattered: “Changing my name was a big moment for me because I never connected with it.”
Patty, her mom, has been just as present. “All I can do is protect her,” she said, admitting the guilt she carries. The puppets were never the whole story of this family — they were the tool it used when words were not enough.
Why Fans Still Bring Up the Puppets
Three years after the cameras went quiet, the puppet story is the one fans still quote. “The puppet show was pretty cool,” one viewer wrote. “Riley is a good sport lol at 18 ain’t no way I would’ve been doing the puppet shows with my dad,” said another. And then the comment that summed up the family’s appeal: “I’m kind of mad. I was totally prepared to hate watch this show but I can’t. So far the whole family is likable.”
YOU MAY LIKEThe Baby Cancer Battle That Made Her 3-Foot-10: Shauna Rae’s Full Health JourneyThat likability is the point. The show gave the Schrankels a hundred storylines, and the one fans reach for is a stepdad with a puppet. It is the smallest detail in the whole show, and somehow the most revealing: a father who understood his daughter did not need to be told how to feel. She needed to feel it herself, even if it took a puppet to get there.
So here is the question that splits the fandom down the middle. If TLC filmed one more special, would you want the cameras at a WhoBuddiez puppet show with Mark and Rylee — or should the puppets stay where they started, at home, just for the family?
