Ryan O’Connell Is Gay, Disabled, and Not Your ‘Inspiration Porn’

Ryan O’Connell always has an opinion. On living in New York: “[Only] if you’re 21 or you have a $21 million.” On people who love Sopranos but hate Girls: “All [Hannah Horvath] did was say like a mildly rude thing to her friend. Tony Soprano is killing someone, and you’re like, yes daddy, fuck me.” And, finally, on boosting your self-esteem: “Walk around with the confidence of Rob Schneider in the late-’90s.”

If you haven’t already realized, O’Connell is unfiltered, a surprising rarity among even the most subversive of comedians today. The 34-year-old is the star and creator of Netflix’s Special, which chronicles the comings out of a twentysomething gay writer with cerebral palsy. The show’s first season was a comedic feat of mania, cynicism and tenderness. Critics adored it, and the Emmys honored Special with four nominations.

This success proved therapeutic for O’Connell. Like his lead character, he’s also gay and has cerebral palsy. “It reconfirmed what I’ve been feeling but also taught not to trust, which is that I do have value,” he says. In his 20s, O’Connell wasn’t so sure he did. Though he had a storybook experience when coming out as gay at 17 (He immediately entered a relationship), O’Connell hid his disability as his writing career soared. For several years, he’d attributed his limp to a car accident.

Then in 2015, he released the memoir I’m Special and publicly acknowledged having cerebral palsy.

His journey from omission to honesty would serve as the inspiration for Special, which just dropped its second and final season. Last week, O’Connell sat down for a wide-ranging interview over Zoom where his candor proved he’s as genuine as ever. In fact, O’Connell is opening up about another development in his life: sobriety. Having previously been addicted to painkillers, O’Connell stopped drinking in the pandemic in pursuit of an even healthier lifestyle. “I feel like I’m the first person in history to get in shape after their show wraps,” he says. Just check out his thot pics on Instagram for proof.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. A few spoilers ahead.

I read your parents sued the doctor who delivered you and you received a settlement, correct?

Yeah, I received that when I was 18. I mean money changes everything, especially in this country ruled by capitalism. I didn’t grow up with money. My parents were very middle-class. My dad was a social worker, and my mom is a nurse. Money was always very tight, especially when they divorced. So seeing money for anything other than a source of anxiety and stress was crazy. Seeing it as something that could be positive [and] celebrated like a source of joy was so new to me. It also opened up my life to this different course. A gay disabled kid from Ventura, California, doesn’t move to New York to go to liberal arts college. A gay disabled kid from Ventura doesn’t have the courage to pursue television writing.

Thank you for being honest about that.

Oh, transparency around money is so important because I think a lot of creatives come from money, and no one likes to talk about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone over to a staff writer’s house. They have a house in Silver Lake in the hills. You’re like, huh, I make the same amount of money as you. How the fuck do you afford this? Honey, it’s not Nancy Drew.

Ryan doesn’t always make likable decisions on Special. Do you ever worry that people are going to think that everything in the show is true to your life?

I don’t concern myself too much with that part. By the way, I don’t deflect criticism. I think criticism is valid and all that stuff. That part of it, I am engaged with. But in terms of how people perceive me, that’s very much their own projection. That has to do with them more than has to do with me.

That’s well-adjusted. Have you always been this well-adjusted?

Personally, no. But in terms of my work, I’ve always been really blessed with feeling control and feeling a sense of I know I have something to say. Everything else was a mess, but my work was a place where I went to figure everything out. That’s how I make sense of the world around me. That I know is weird. Because society would not want me to feel that way. If I actually looked around me, I have no right to be acting like Kevin James or something. But I just feel like I allowed myself a sliver of confidence as a treat, and I funneled it into my work.

That fits into the theme of the show. Whether or not it’s intentional, Special is pretty positive.

Yeah, I think there’s an undercurrent of joy… When marginalized people are allowed to be in TV shows or sport or film or whatever, it ends up being very didactic, and it becomes very much about their identity. I’m very aware of I never want someone to become a hologram of their own suffering. To me, it’s all about story and characters. How people talk to each other [and] how people relate to each other. Then you can use the identity to give you story or do whatever you want, but you have to always make sure that it’s coming from a truthful experience. I don’t really think too hard about this is what I want to say with this episode. It’s called Special. It’s not called Afterschool Special.

That’s a good way to put it. Often with representation, which itself is kind of such a buzzword now, so much of that ends up just being trauma porn…

There’s something also fucked up about our value only being measured by our trauma. Our stories can exist, but god forbid you show us having joy because that’s really subversive at this point.

What I would say is relatively new to TV shows about queer people is that you’re letting gay men be toxic, which we kind of are but have not always been held accountable to.

Yeah, we can be for sure. Ryan is not inspiration porn. You’re gonna be mad at him. If you’re frustrated with him and you don’t like that, you should think about what that says about you.

The open relationship that’s explored in the second season, truly I don’t think I’ve seen a gay open relationship explored in that way that wasn’t, as you said, traumatic.

Yeah, that was a really interesting story to tell. As a gay man in a relationship, most people that I know are in some version of an open relationship. I don’t know if I know anyone that’s completely closed. The door is slightly ajar. The door can be wide open. I love conversations around monogamy or, in terms of gay men, deconstructing monogamy [and] really questioning why it’s there.

Whenever I talk to my straight friends about relationships, they’re gobsmacked and their world’s completely cracked open. I’m like, hon, are you okay? So if anything, I just hope to normalize it and put it into the public consciousness because it’s not that crazy.

Something like Modern Family felt very progressive at the time and now feels of a moment. Are you living in the moment?

I am very in the moment. Here’s the thing. I look at season one, and there are things I would have done differently. There are stories I would have told differently, but I actually don’t mind it. It’s representative of that time [and] of where I was as a person who made it.

There are things in Special season two…there’s one in particular that, oh, I wouldn’t do it that way anymore. It was in episode four where we have the flashbacks. Baby Ryan starts walking for the first time and it’s very triumphant. Everyone did a great job, and it is what it is. But I think I would interrogate that more of like why it’s so important that Ryan learns how to walk and why it’s fucked up. We should live in a society that’s more accessible, so that the end goal isn’t becoming less disabled. It’s being able to be disabled and live just as full a life as an able-bodied person.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying.

So I’ve already evolved past that, and we made it a year ago. That’s okay. It is what it is. It’s where I was at the time, and I’m going to always evolve and be radicalized. That’s fine.

You came out as having cerebral palsy in your book in 2015. What was your life was like following that announcement?

I was 28, and I thought when I came out about my CP I was done. I kind of felt like Ryan does at the top of season two. Well, that’s it. All my secrets are out. I am who I am. I am evolved. Everything’s done. Nighty, night! No need for therapy. Then I would say a few years later I began to kind of be like, oh wow, being closeted about my disability was really insane and really traumatizing to me as a person. I have lived my existence so much thinking about other people’s feelings. Ryan says it in the show. He goes I’ve been worrying so much about the people around me being comfortable with my existence. I’ve never once asked myself am I comfortable? How the hell do I feel?

I really related to that. Those are not questions I interrogated until a few years after coming out of the disabled closet…But, you know, that’s just part of the journey, babe.

How do you feel about it now?

I feel really good. Honestly, honestly, honestly, the show has helped me a lot. My story has value, and my storytelling has value. There is a place for me in this weird fucked up business of toxicity. There is room for stories like mine, and people want to see them. So the success really was meaningful for so many reasons, but I think it’s been really healing for me.

This is the final season of Special. A lot of your career seems rooted in your own story. How do you feel about moving on to a chapter where you don’t have to mine your own life anymore, unless you want to?

I don’t think about that. [laughs] LOL. You’re like okay bitch what do you think about.

Again, to a casual observer they look at something like disability. It must be ripped from the headlines of this person’s life. If it’s about gayness or disability, it must be my diary entry that I printed out. There’s so much fictionalizing that happens.

Noah Baumbach makes the same movie over and over again and people are obsessed. Sofia Coppola makes the same movie over and over again and people are obsessed. So many creative people mine the same themes to tell a different version of a story.

They don’t have the word representation attached.

Yeah, exactly. They’re given more space to just do the same thing over and over again. It’s weird. There’s also this attitude as a marginalized person you’re allowed to take up space to a point then it’s like oh you’re getting too greedy. I’m just going to continue telling the stories I want to tell, and I’m not going to concern myself with much else. I’ll just go where the news takes me, and right now it’s taking me to disability gay sex land again and again, which I celebrate.

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