Playing the right actor often means finding someone who matches the description of the characters in the script, but Josh Sandquist can do that in his series “Best Foot Forward.” I didn’t know if.
“Looking back, it sounds ridiculous, but that was four years ago,” Sundquist recalled recently. “At that time, I didn’t even think it was possible to hire a disconnected actor.”
Sundquist helped cast a fictional version of his young self, the protagonist of “Best Foot Forward,” which debuted on Apple TV + on Friday. Roughly based on Sundquist’s memoir “Just Don’t Fall,” the series revolves around a 12-year-old boy, the only child in his school who has different limbs. The series’ executive producer, Sundquist, lost his left leg to osteosarcoma at the age of 10.
Character disability is at the heart of “Best Foot Forward,” but Sundquist’s expectations have been measured. “I just thought,’Oh, of course, we’ll have to cast a healthy kid and double his body,'” he said. “Because that was all I saw throughout my life.”
To Sundquist’s delight, the production company behind the show, Muse Entertainment, was keen to find actors who shared the character’s disabilities. After casting the rookie Logan Marmino as a fictional Josh, Sandquist’s view of what’s possible has evolved dramatically.
“By the time we turned green and started looking for the crew, I was completely transformed into the importance of genuine expression in front of both. When Behind the camera, “he said.
What happens in front of the camera often dominates discourse on expression in entertainment. The news media has paid some attention to the lack of opportunities for actors with disabilities in recent years, but there is still plenty of room for progress.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention It is estimated that 26% of American adults have a disability, GLAAD report Released earlier this year, characters with disabilities, including children, made up only 2.8 percent of all screenplay television show series regulars in the 2021-22 TV season. (The report did not comprehensively consider the representation of failures in cable and streaming services.) Early GLAAD studySince 2021, it has been found that the majority of TV characters with disabilities are played by non-disabled actors.
Even when an actor with a disability appears, he often can only deal with half of the problem, Sundquist said. In many cases, turning the camera “you can see that the obstacle is only represented in one direction,” he said.
In creating the “Best Foot Forward,” Sundquist decided to hire people with disabilities throughout the production, but finding a crew member with a disability was harder than he expected. When it comes to actors, “agents know that you want people with disabilities and they are already registered,” he said. But when the producers contacted the unions and guilds that represented the crew’s status, he said he realized that most of them weren’t tracking which of their members had a disability.
That’s why Sundquist called on social media and relied on connecting with the following disability advocacy groups: RespectAbility.. “We are not a dispatching company,” said Lauren Appelbaum, who runs Respect Ability’s. Entertainment LabWorkshops for disabled professionals working in television and movies. “We have noticed that studios and individual productions are in this position contacting us,” I want help with this. ” The seven people who worked on “Best Foot Forward” were lab graduates.
“Best Foot Forward” is not the first show with people with disabilities on either side of the camera. Several shows over the past few years have been produced by people with disabilities, such as Sundance Now’s “This Close” about two best friends with hearing loss and Netflix’s “Special”, a comedy about gay men with cerebral palsy. Was and starred. Appelbaum said “Best Foot Forward” is built on the foundations laid by these shows.
“What makes’Best Foot Forward’ really unique is the intent behind bringing in a crew with a disability,” she explained. “Crew of all levels, from production assistants to directors.”
One of the show’s screenwriters, Zack Anna, previously wrote for the ABC series “Speechless,” which aired between 2016 and 2019. Praised For a realistic depiction of a teenager suffering from cerebral palsy like Anna. There are very few writers with “speechless” disabilities, Anna said, “it was very novel at the time.” Regarding “Best Foot Forward,” he said, “it was half the writer’s room.”
“No one felt responsible to represent the entire community,” Anna added. “It also released us just to make it interesting.”
Unlike many works, the writers of “Best Foot Forward” and the crew with disabilities were not tasked with educating non-disabled collaborators and advocating accessibility. It was someone’s actual work. Kiah Amara was the production accessibility coordinator. It plays a relatively new role in Hollywood and is typically handled by disabled professionals who discuss on-screen reliability and how to deal with disabled crew members.
According to Amara, the first step in the set is to investigate the crew and evaluate how to make the production as accessible as possible. “List the following:” Select the check box. Do you want to access a sensory room? “Amara said. “Do you need a’dark mode script or documentation? Do you need fonts accessible to dyslexia?” Next, crew training covering disability-related languages and how to create an inclusive space. I have.
“It’s not the disabled who need to learn something,” Amara said. It’s all people without disabilities who need to stay in this space, like “This is the way you’re not afraid to think you’re going to ruin.” “
After consulting with past works, Amara found that hesitating to hire a crew member with a disability often stems from the assumption that doing so would be overly time consuming and expensive. This broad belief allows some crew members to hide their obstacles. “They may choose not to disclose it to anyone — it’s still very dangerous to be invalidated in the industry,” Amara said.
That was what Sundquist was aware of when trying to recruit a crew member with a disability. “We called and could be:’Hey, I heard you had some bad experiences on the set. Sorry. We are on our set I’m trying to do better. Can you convince me to board? “
In doing so, the work frequently attracted “people whose resumes have not yet reflected their level of talent.” Sundquist was able to better match them thanks to the “Best Foot Forward” achievement. As an example, he mentioned Ashley Eakin, a director with different limbs, whose previous work was primarily limited to short films. Eakin directed two episodes of “Best Foot Forward.”
“By attending the show, she joins the Directors Guild of America, which makes it very easy to find a job for a future director,” Sandquist said.
The production crew also included evidence of undeveloped skills that might be among those that others might have overlooked. One example was Marissa Ericsson, a production assistant who was tasked with enclosing and transporting child actors from school to the set. “In my hometown of Alameda, I usually work as a teacher’s assistant in kindergarten,” says Ericsson, who is excited to combine her previous production experience with her work experience with children. She added.
Ericsson with Down Syndrome was one of the crew members recommended by Appelbaum of Respect Ability who participated in the organization’s 2019 Entertainment Lab. Appelbaum recalled the workshop Ericsson attended with major studio executives. “Marissa stood up and started talking about some of the work she did. Mr. Aperbaum said Ericsson’s work ethic and experience overturned executive expectations for people with Down Syndrome.
“In their minds, I think I could, of course, hire people who use wheelchairs, but I thought I couldn’t hire people with intellectual or developmental disabilities,” Aperbaum said. He said. “Marissa has clearly proved that it’s wrong.” Recently, Ericsson was offered the work of three production assistants at the same time. (She accepted a position in the Disney + short film anthology series called “Launchpad.”)
Appelbaum et al. Said that it is important for guilds and unions to investigate demographic information such as disability, race and gender of members in order to increase the expression of persons with disabilities in movies and television. The Writers Guild of America does so, and the Directors Guild of America began seeking information on disability situations in a membership survey in 2021. The International Alliance of Theatrical Film and Theater Labor Union (IATSE) is a union that represents the crew of grips, filmmakers, costume makers, cosmetics and more. Artist, Vote last year We will start holding an annual census to increase diversity within our membership. However, it is unclear if it contains information about the failure. (IATSE did not respond to requests for comment.)
“Without data, it’s hard to change things,” Aperbaum said. “When you have difficult numbers, people are much more likely to want to change something.”
Until then, writer Anna hopes that “Best Foot Forward” will be an important step in Hollywood employment practices.
For me, “Oh, we looked for people with disabilities, we looked for people with colors, and we couldn’t find anyone.” It’s like putting an end to that debate that you hear from time to time. “He said. “You can point this out and say,’No, there are many.'”
