Trish Bendix

“I’ve always looked at life through a LOL lens,” said the 32-year-old writer and creator of “Special,” a new Netflix series debuting Friday. He uses “LOL” (and other variations on the phrase) often, pronouncing it phonetically like the first syllable of “lollipop.”

This is, as the influencers say, on-brand for O’Connell, who spent several years cultivating his voice as part of a wave of bloggers writing highly confessional personal essays (“An Open Letter To My Only One-Night Stand”), humorous how-to guides (“How to Appear Cooler on Facebook Than You Really Are”) and listicles (“5 Valid Reasons To Get Drunk With Someone”) on the pop culture lifestyle site Thought Catalog. In a trajectory not unlike the blogger-turned-author-turned-TV creator Lindy West, O’Connell’s viral musings quickly landed him a book deal and now, a TV show.

But what was initially meant to be a print version of his popular satirical content for millennials evolved into a memoir in which O’Connell wrote publicly for the first time about having cerebral palsy.

“It was kind of a cognitive dissonance because I wasn’t even really aware of [the irony] on a deeper level,” O’Connell said while sitting on the patio of a West Hollywood coffee shop earlier this month. “Like, ‘LOL I’m literally baring every aspect of my soul except I’m fundamentally denying who I am.’ I mean, I was 24; that’s my excuse. I couldn’t even begin to unpack that.”

“I’m Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves,” O’Connell’s detailed account of his experiences as a disabled gay 20-something, caught the attention of producer Todd Spiewak, who shared the book with his now-husband, the “Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons. The couple reached out to O’Connell about making the show, and signed on as executive producers; O’Connell began writing the scripts for “Special” during a break from his job as an executive story editor on the “Will &amp; Grace” reboot.

“Special,” a short-form series (each episode runs around 15 minutes), has O’Connell (a first-time actor) playing a less outgoing version of himself in a dark comedy where the joke, he said, “is on people who aren’t disabled, and how they view disabled people.”

In a recent interview, O’Connell spoke about using humor to his advantage, educating the general public about his disability and having mixed feelings about seeing himself on billboards. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q. Have you always been funny?

A. I think I realized instinctively at a really young age that I needed to disarm people and make them feel comfortable around me. At the same time, I feel resentful because as a gay man with cerebral palsy it’s like, “Yeah, I have cerebral palsy but don’t worry, babe — I’m wearing an Acne [Studios] T-shirt. I have APC jeans on and am going to make you laugh! Nothing to be scared of here!” I’ve spent so much of my existence trying to appear palatable to everybody else.

Q. The pilot establishes that you’re disabled and gay, but the gayness is immediately accepted by your mother and co-workers; it’s never even a question. Was that true for you in real life?

A. When I realized I was gay at age 12, I didn’t love that for me. It wasn’t the combo meal that I would order off the menu. But I was very fortunate to have supportive friends and family so that was never really my struggle, never my cross to bear. It really was being disabled that I just felt so ashamed of from a really young age. Growing up, I would have tons of surgeries; I was in physical therapy constantly; I’d been fitted for leg braces. Of course because of the ableist society we’re born into, you just want to be like everybody else. That really has always been my struggle — embracing that part of myself and not trying to run from it at all times.

Q. Had you experienced a lot of discrimination in the past?

A. Being disabled, moving through this world, you’re going to have to eat a lot of troll sandwiches. You’re going to have to encounter a lot of people who are like, “Are you OK?” — who are going to infantilize you and not know how to treat you. Just the other day, I was leaving the gym and a woman behind me was like, “Are your legs sore?” And I thought, “She can’t be talking about me.” Which is so funny because this happens to me all the time, but every time I’m like, “This can’t be happening, because no one would be this rude or out of touch.” And then sure enough, I go down the stairs and she’s like, “Are you OK?” and gives me a thumbs up as if I have true brain damage. I just accept it, even though that’s [expletive] up and I should be like, “What’s wrong with you?”

But also in the moment, I can’t ever come up with a good response because you’re just kind of stunned and you want to get past it so quickly and you don’t want to lecture them. That’s another thing: As a disabled person, the onus falls on me to educate them. But then you also don’t want this person to keep going through life with ignorance so you want to be the one that changes this perception of disability. But it’s also just tiring and you’ve got [expletive] to do. You’ve got to pick up your laundry in 10 minutes, honey, you’ve got to go. You can’t give your TED Talk.

Q. Are you concerned that people will hear “gay and cerebral palsy” and expect a sad story? Or be offended that it’s a comedy?

A. Everything can be mined for comedy. I think humor was a really, really important part of this for me because I think that the way people treat disabled people, it’s not out of malice. It’s not like they want to take us down. I think it’s just pure ignorance. I think it makes people uncomfortable like they don’t want to offend, and so in that process they kind of end up offending.

So I think giving them a show like “Special,” which is funny and I’m the one making the jokes and I’m the one writing them — I think it makes them feel at ease. They’re like, “Oh OK, this isn’t some scary thing. Disabled people are just like me!” I don’t know why this is a revolutionary concept. I just think they don’t know what to do with us at all.

Q. What do you anticipate it’s going to be like to see yourself on a billboard?

A. Strange. I mean mama never wanted to act, you know? That wasn’t my journey, honey. I wanted to be Nora Ephron, not Meg Ryan. I’m excited for it and I loved acting, I really did, but it was just not what I’d planned. It’s just taking some recalibrating and getting used to, like, “OK, I’m going to be visible in this way.” Growing up disabled you’re not thinking, “I want to be a movie star, Mom and Dad! Enroll me in acting classes!” You’re like, “Gee, I hope I get my leg braces off by the time I’m 16. I hope I can learn how to drive a car!” I hope to inspire other disabled people and also show [the rest of] society what we can do, which is — spoiler — a lot.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/arts/television/special-netflix-ryan-oconnell-disabled.html" id="5c170ec9-ee17-312b-a3e5-ce99da6b5431">The New York Times</a>.

A Dark Comedy About Being Disabled? He's in on the Joke

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The internet is a product of Ryan O’Connell, just as he is a product of the internet.

“Key and Peele” turned goofs on black American identity into highly clickable sketch comedy; “Inside Amy Schumer” did the same with critical assessments of gender norms; and “Broad City” reinvigorated the New-York-strivers genre with its offbeat, feminist millennial sensibility. All were among the buzziest shows on TV.

But that was then. “Key and Peele” ended in 2015; “Inside Amy Schumer” has been on hiatus since 2016; and “Broad City” is nearing the end of its five-season run. “South Park” and “Tosh.0,” meanwhile, are still going strong.

Which means it is again time for Comedy Central to more aggressively court its “growth audience” — anyone who is not a young, straight, white male — Kent Alterman, the network president, said during a recent interview at his office in Hollywood. Enter a new slate of shows, many of them created by emerging talent with a variety of points of view, that is part of a “conscious attempt to reflect the world we live in,” Alterman said.

The first up was “The Other Two,” which debuted in late January. Created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, former “Saturday Night Live” head writers, the show stars Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke as the 20-something older siblings of a young YouTube star, whose sudden success coincides with their quarter-life crises.

It has a gay lead (Tarver) and is staffed predominantly by female or gay writers (including Kelly), and early results have been encouraging. The premiere episode was watched by 2.25 million people, including streaming and DVR viewing, and Comedy Central has since seen its female audience climb significantly. Viewing among women ages 18-49 was up by 13 percent in February, according to Nielsen — the most growth of any audience single segment and the network’s biggest spike in that demo since 2014. (The January return of “Broad City,” the lead-in for “The Other Two,” was also a big factor.)

Other upcoming new series include “South Side,” set in the predominantly black Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, debuting this summer; and “Alternatino,” a sketch show from a Latino millennial perspective, coming in June; and “Awkwafina,” created by and starring the titular actress and comedian, that will be Comedy Central’s first show with an Asian-American lead.

Alterman is loathe to refer to these series as replacements for “Key and Peele” and the like. “It’s not like we have formulaic slots that we’re filling — ‘OK, we lost this kind of show, we have to replace it with this kind of show.’ But I would say that there’s always an ongoing evolution.”

That evolution has gained speed since Alterman — who first worked at Comedy Central from 1996 to 2000 before leaving for the movie industry — returned in 2010 as the head of original programming and production. Currently, there are nine women in senior leadership positions, five of which Alterman hired, as well as three people of color and at least two who identify as LGBT. When he was promoted to president of original programming in 2013, he helped make the decision to hire Trevor Noah as Jon Stewart’s replacement on “The Daily Show” and helped to develop “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Broad City.”

“I like to think that Kent didn’t just put ‘Broad City’ on the air because we’re women and he needed to diversify the creators,” said Abbi Jacobson, who created and stars in the show with Ilana Glazer. “He has a really wonderful eye for comedy and I think that a lot of incredible comedians right now happen to be women, and he’s giving them a platform to do their thing without a ton of micromanaging.”

A similar hands-off approach has allowed the creators of “The Other Two” to give the show — and story lines involving Cary’s sexuality, in particular — a more “authentic” feel, Kelly said.

“Sexuality is a big part of our show and the stories we wanted to tell, so it was important that we had other gay writers to help draw from their real experiences,” he said.

Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle, the creators of “South Side,” say Comedy Central has given them the freedom to run their all-black writers’ room (save for director Michael Blieden, who also wrote one episode) how they see fit.

“Even among the executives, there is some diversity in hiring, and that makes the process way less translation heavy,” Riddle said. “Changes in the boardroom have actually helped us get a little bit closer to what we actually want to do.”

The show, which Salahuddin describes as a “hard comedy with hard edges,” was shot on the actual South Side of Chicago, an area generally depicted on TV as violent and dangerous, with local nonactors in speaking roles and as extras.

“We really wanted something that was not only close to our hearts, but allowed us to let Chicago speak for itself and show people how funny it can be,” Salahuddin said.

“Alternatino” stars the “Broad City” alum Arturo Castro in a sketch show (based on his Comedy Central web series) that sends up American ideals about Latino culture in the same vein as Schumer did with modern American womanhood. In one sequence from the pilot, Castro’s onscreen persona is frustrated when a woman he’s dating finds him lacking of the machismo of the Colombian cartel character he plays on the Netflix series “Narcos.”

Aside from Arturo, who was born in Guatemala, the writers room has three women, one Mexican-American writer, and four white men.

“The packets submitted by young white dudes are incredibly funny — we try to focus on the funny first — but obviously there are things we can’t explain,” Castro said. “I have to check in with [other Latinos] like, ‘Am I being weird about not liking this?’ And they’re like ‘No, no, dude — my mom would kill me if you put that on!’ and I’m like ‘Thank you! I can’t write a stigmata sketch.'”

Alterman said that he tries to give creators plenty of freedom, but he also wants to “make sure they’re protecting themselves, too,” with a “mix of more experienced and midlevel [writers with] newbie writers.”

“But we never dictate that,” he added.

In some cases, however, concerns arise. After “Awkwafina” was green-lit for 10 episodes last month, the star tweeted that her writers’ room was staffed with all women — which would be a first for the network and a rarity for any show.

Alterman admits he wondered, “Should we have at least one male writer, just to have that point of view?” he said. “And I was just talking with Sarah Babineau ... and she said, ‘Uh, no — why do we need to?'”

Babineau, the executive vice president and co-head of talent and development at Comedy Central, clarified that there are two men in the “Awkwafina” writers’ room, a writers’ assistant and a writers’ production assistant.

But Alterman understood Babineau’s response to his query: “I’m sure that there were years and years where it was all men in the writer’s room and no one thought to ask that question the other way: ‘Do you think we should have a woman in the room?'”

Comedy Central has several other series in the works that fit their new, more expansive bill, including “The New Negroes With Baron Vaughn and Open Mike Eagle,” premiering this spring, and pilots for “The Chameleon,” a scripted comedy from openly gay comic Matteo Lane and “How to Be a Couple” from writer Naomi Ekperigin (formerly of “Broad City”) and Andy Beckerman based on their real-life interracial relationship.

But while the network is branching out, Alterman says there are no plans to completely abandon its base of young white guys anytime soon — “South Park” and “Tosh.0,” two of the network’s longest-running shows currently on-air, are also consistently its highest-rated.

Last month, Comedy Central announced the return of David Spade, who previously hosted “The Showbiz Show,” a parody of celebrity news programs, on the network from 2005-07. In this new project, another pop culture-skewering show that debuts later this year, he will be the latest host to try his luck in the post-"Daily Show” slot where Larry Wilmore and Jordan Klepper were unable to find success.

Spade’s hiring again raises what has become a persistent question: Does late-night really need another straight white guy?

Comedy Central executives discussed that issue, Babineau said, but the network’s research indicates that its audience loves Spade.

“In the same way that we’re not making programming just for men, we’re not making programming just for women either,” Babineau said.

“You look for the Venn diagram where they all intersect,” she added, “where your core and growth will like it.”

With Spade’s show being joined by upcoming projects with other white comics like Rory Scovel, Anthony Jeselnik and Tim Dillon, Comedy Central isn’t abandoning young white guys anytime soon. But it’s betting that, as with the network’s past hits told from diverse points of view, inspired comedy will transcend demographics.

The brand’s core audience and growth audience are not mutually exclusive, Alterman said. “I just don’t think everything has to look like me for me to think that (it’s) funny.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="4fead16e-4bef-4c67-a251-391dd2de1786" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/television/with-shows-like-the-other-two-comedy-central-looks-beyond-its-core.html">The New York Times</a>.

Comedy Central again looks beyond the bro market

LOS ANGELES — A few years ago Comedy Central, best known for bro-centric series like “South Park” and “Tosh.0,” was enjoying the ratings, critical praise and cultural cachet that came from looking beyond its young white male template.

Babineau, the executive producer and co-head of talent and development at Comedy Central, clarified that there are two men in the “Awkwafina” writers’ room, a writers’ assistant and a writers’ production assistant.

The brand’s core audience and growth audience are not mutually exclusive, Alterman said. “I just don’t think everything has to look like me for me to think that [it’s] funny.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/television/with-shows-like-the-other-two-comedy-central-looks-beyond-its-core.html" id="9bbf5a33-19c6-390e-aaf5-b86667cb1708">The New York Times</a>.

With Shows Like 'The Other Two,' Comedy Central Looks Beyond Its Core

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Trish Bendix

Articles written by the author

A Dark Comedy About Being Disabled? He's in on the Joke

A Dark Comedy About Being Disabled? He's in on the Joke

Comedy Central again looks beyond the bro market

With Shows Like 'The Other Two,' Comedy Central Looks Beyond Its Core