Ryan O'Connell on Netflix's 'Special'

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Content warning: This interview contains some explicit language and graphic, frank talk about sex that some listeners might be sensitive to. Ryan O'Connell is the creator and star of the Netflix show Special. It's a semi-autobiographical sitcom about Ryan's own life – his experience as a gay man, and coming to terms with his identity as a disabled person. Ryan has cerebral palsy. It's a congenital disorder that can affect someone's movement, muscle tone, or posture. For Ryan, that means CP mainly manifests as a limp. The show's depiction of disability is groundbreaking. It shows the intersection of disability and sexuality in a way that is rarely ever seen on screen. These days, Ryan is currently starring in the new reboot of Queer As Folk. On the latest episode, we'll revisit public radio veteran Ray Suarez in conversation with Ryan from last year.

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Transcript

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0:42.0	Bullseye.
1:03.4	Next up on the show, my conversation with Ryan O'Connell, recorded last year.
1:08.8	Ryan is the creator and star of the show Special, which is streaming on Netflix.
1:13.6	It's loosely based on a book that Ryan wrote in 2015 called I'm Special and Other Lies We Tell
1:19.4	Ourselves.
1:20.8	Both the book and the television series draw it directly from Ryan's life.
1:25.2	Ryan has cerebral palsy.
1:26.9	He calls it CP for short. It's a congenital
1:29.6	disorder that can affect someone's movement, muscle tone, or posture. For Ryan, that mostly means
1:36.5	a limp. When Ryan was 20, he left his hometown and started college in New York. It was a chance to
1:43.2	start over. Instead of telling folks he had
1:45.6	cerebral palsy, he said he had been hit by a car, which was true. He had been. But Ryan thought it was
1:52.6	easier and maybe more relatable to chalk his condition up to a car crash, then explain his CP
	...

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