Actor/writer Ryan O’Connell, who has cerebral palsy, wants to change the way we talk about disabilities — and he’s hoping to do that with “Special,” his new Netflix sitcom premiering Friday.
“When people see me in public, they think I have limited cognitive ability; they think I can’t do certain things,” says O’Connell, 32, who’s written for “Will & Grace” and MTV’s “Awkward.”
“One time I was walking to a table 20 feet away, and someone was like, ‘Do you need help?’ I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I know it all comes from a good place, but it’s still an offensive place. I feel like there’s such ignorance around disability, so people infantilize you. Hopefully with ‘Special,’ people will start to see disabled people as strong, multifaceted human beings. We all are.”
O’Connell created and stars in “Special,” produced by “The Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons. It follows a young gay man with CP (O’Connell) as he begins his first job, has adventures in dating and moves into his first solo apartment away from his mother, hanging out with his friends Carey (Augustus Prew) and Kim (Punam Patel).
Episodes are just 15-20 minutes long, and although it’s fictional, many scenarios are drawn from O’Connell’s own life.
The hardest part of making the show? Writing it alone, since there was no budget for a writers’ room.
“Having to do it entirely by myself was isolating, kind of ‘The Shining’ Jack Nicholson,” says O’Connell. “When I knew I had to write the entire thing and act in it and executive produce and do all these things, I was scared s–tless, I’m not going to lie. I will say it is rewarding as a disabled person — where you’ve been underestimated your entire life — to keep challenging yourself and when you’re scared of something, to really go after it.”
It was also hard to maintain interest after the initial pitch.
“Whenever you’re trying to sell a show with a character that hasn’t been seen on television before, Hollywood is so horny for a new concept — and then they get so scared,” says O’Connell. “Hollywood is still a place that relies on very tried and true formulas, as you can tell by literally everything being f–king rebooted. I say this as someone who has been gainfully employed by reboots,” he adds, referring to his work as an executive story editor on “Will & Grace.”
“Hollywood is so [enthusiastic about] diversity right now and representation,” he says. “But it still is hard to push something through that people have never seen before. So it made it a lot harder.”
Eventually he got Parsons interested, in part because his husband, Todd Spiewak, saw an article O’Connell wrote on a blog called Thought Catalog about having CP.
“Jim was just starting to launch a production company,” says O’Connell. “I had a couple studios interested in it but I really connected with Jim and Todd; they were so sweet and warm and understood exactly what it was that I was going for. I knew they’d protect my vision. Jim is a dream, he’s so down to earth, he’s so supportive, he gets it.
“Let me tell you, for an A-list celebrity, that’s rare!”