In one scene, Ryan loses his virginity to a sex worker. The stories of people with disabilities have long been told by people without them, on both sides of the camera. Within a few days of launching, the trailer for Special was approaching 3 million views on Twitter, racking up hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. “Are you thinking he’s going to get humiliated because he’s disabled?” he asks. Ryan O'Connell has cerebral palsy, a permanent movement disorder that appears in early childhood. “I don’t know everything there is to know about disability. “Disabled people are strong, powerful people and they need to be included in the conversation.”. The stories of people with disabilities have long been told by people without them, on both sides of the camera. According to one interview, it took him 28 years to accept that he was disabled and when he was 20-years-old he started to lie and say that his limp was due to a car accident. All the events, all the discourse, all the corporations showing their support. See the full gallery: Ryan O'Connell: 8 facts about the Special star you have to know, 10 books to read by Black authors during Black History Month and beyond Still, being called a trailblazer gives him some anxiety. He is known for his 2015 memoir, I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, about his life as a gay man with cerebral palsy, which he adapted into television series Special for Netflix, which premiered in April 2019. But disability has been almost as scarce in mainstream discussions as it has been on the screen. Los Angeles, California, June 28 – According to GLAAD’s 2018-2019 Where We Are on TV Report, while the 2018-19 television season includes 18 characters with disabilities, versus 16 in 2017-18, that number still vastly underrepresents the actual number of people with disabilities, representing less than one-sixth. But there’s still a long way to go. “I’m addicted to being honest,” he says. Comedian Ryan O’Connell has worked on TV shows like “Awkward” and “Will & Grace," but in 2019, he took his career to new heights with the Netflix series “Special,” which he created, wrote and stars in. “I was denying this huge part of myself which was my disability, and it was causing a lot of problems for me emotionally. “They don’t know what they want,” he says. It appears O’Connell’s hard work has paid off: Critics have praised "Special," and it has been celebrated for its representation of a queer, disabled man. I just know what I went through,” he says. According to one interview, it took him 28 years to accept that he was disabled and when he was 20-years-old he started to lie and say that his limp was due to a car accident. “Jim Parsons had heard about it and was interested in optioning it, and a couple of studios were too, but I was really into Jim. Special may be shot with a breezy, Los Angeles expansiveness, but spiritually it’s enclosed by the walls of that second closet. The comments constituted a chorus of finallys. With O’Connell in control of the story, he was able to do something on television people may not have seen before. “They need you to tell them.”. “The majority of disabilities are invisible: mental-health conditions, chronic pain, learning disabilities,” says Mizrahi. Last year, films such as Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians were heralded as milestones in representation—not just for who was on camera but who was behind it. “I was just trying to get out alive, honey.”. All Rights Reserved. In recent years, conversations about representation in Hollywood have increased in urgency, from #OscarsSoWhite to the whitewashing of Asian roles to the lack of women behind the camera.
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