diff --git a/nbconvert/exporters/templateexporter.py b/nbconvert/exporters/templateexporter.py
index 472549920..fc6a89b67 100644
--- a/nbconvert/exporters/templateexporter.py
+++ b/nbconvert/exporters/templateexporter.py
@@ -40,6 +40,13 @@
 )
 
 
+def escape_html(s, quote=True):
+    if not isinstance(s, str):
+        return s
+    else:
+        return html.escape(s)
+
+
 default_filters = {
     "indent": filters.indent,
     "markdown2html": filters.markdown2html,
@@ -71,7 +78,7 @@
     "convert_pandoc": filters.convert_pandoc,
     "json_dumps": json.dumps,
     # For removing any HTML
-    "escape_html": html.escape,
+    "escape_html": escape_html,
     # For sanitizing HTML for any XSS
     "clean_html": clean_html,
     "strip_trailing_newline": filters.strip_trailing_newline,