Hollywood Inclusion

Leah Romond. Photo by Liz Bretz

Los Angeles, June 24 – Leah Romond has proven herself to be an unstoppable force after making a full transition from litigation to film production. This shift in her career was brought on by a brain injury that affected her work as a full-time litigator in a major Los Angeles firm. Romond is now a successful film producer as well as an attorney. Her latest project, Best Summer Ever, was slated to premiere at SXSW 2020 before the global pandemic hit. Despite this, the film rightfully earned the SWXSW Final Draft Screenwriters Award.

Romond spoke to the newest incoming cohort of Respectability’s Summer Lab for Entertainment Professionals with Disabilities during an information session on Physical Production led by RespectAbility’s Senior Production Advisor Nasreen Alkhateeb, as well as Marissa Erickson, both of whom are alumni of the 2019 Lab. Erickson, who worked for Disney as a production assistant for several shorts that premiered on Disney+ earlier this summer, also worked on Best Summer Ever with Romond as a production assistant. “Networking is the key,” Erickson told Lab participants. [continue reading…]

Massimo in Luca

Los Angeles, June 24 – Disney/Pixar’s newest film Luca has tackled several areas of inclusion – including one often not highlighted – disability. This film features characters who are sea monsters including Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) who travel to land and meet a new human friend Giulia (Emily Berman). When Luca and Alberto meet Giulia’s father Massimo, viewers see that he only has one arm. When Luca asks him how it happened, he says in a scary voice, “A sea monster ate it.” After a beat, he reveals he was just kidding and that he was born like that. This is the only acknowledgment of his disability. It is refreshing to see a character with a disability like this and have it be just part of him and not a big plot point. It really hammers home the lesson of acceptance in this movie. The dad not having an arm at first made him really scary, but it is just a part of him that people don’t understand.

Ashley Eakin, a writer/director who was born with a limb difference, also agrees that Luca has handled this representation well. “Luca is a great example of how we can include representation of people with different bodies in all of our content. Too often the character with some type of disability or limb difference is the villain or scary. While Massimo is brash, he is also a talented chef and caring father. They even make light of the way he lost his limb with ultimately explaining it was just the way he came into the world.” [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, CA, June 24 – “You help the most marginalized person, everybody else rises,” Cheryl L. Bedford told the 30 emerging and mid-career creatives participating in RespectAbility’s Lab for Entertainment Professionals with Disabilities, which kicked off the first session of its third round this Tuesday. Bedford who returned as a keynote speaker after rave responses from Lab alumni, spoke about being “a rebel and a trouble-maker” in the entertainment industry.

“Turning fear into action” and “fighting for the marginalized” are two key points of Cheryl’s work, but the most inspiring part of listening to her speak is how she embodies that spirit of activism in every aspect of her life and action, offering complete support to those who have been kept down while calling out the others who don’t show up when they say they will. She opens the door for everyone to boldly proclaim “I’m that person.” [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, June 24 – The first day of this year’s Entertainment Lab for Professionals with Disabilities introduced the Summer 2021 cohort to a group of successful Lab alumni who have used the program to springboard into their entertainment careers prioritizing disability inclusion. Two of these individuals include Ava Rigelhaupt, a 2020 Lab alumna who also served as a RespectAbility Entertainment Media and Communications Fellow in Spring 2021, and April Caputi, a 2019 Lab alumna. Caputi now is working as a Casting Associate through The Walt Disney Company’s Executive Incubator Program while Rigelhaupt just started as a Casting Intern with Nickelodeon. [continue reading…]

New York City, June 17 – Primary elections are underway in NYC and New Yorkers are thinking hard about the issues that matter most to them. Accessibility and disability and social justice are at the forefront of many minds, which makes All Riders: The Fight for Accessibility a perfect film to watch before heading to the booth. Shot the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, All Riders takes a poignant look at the intersectionality of unmet access needs within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

Often thought of as synonymous with accessible transportation because of its extensive transit system, The Big Apple has continually fallen short of its goal to become “the most accessible city in the world.” Out of over 400 stations, less than 30% are accessible, a portion of those accessible in only one direction, and with daily elevator failures close to 25% based on data from 2014-2015, that can leave New Yorkers with less than 20% of stations accessible at any one time across the massive five borough system. This is a dismal number considering the Americans with Disabilities Act, which celebrates its 31st birthday this July, requires that all stations be accessible under federal law. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, CA, June 14 – When YouTuber and disability advocate Cole Sydnor decided to ask out the cute girl who worked at his physical therapy gym, he had no way of knowing that he was about to ask out his future wife. Nor did he know that in doing so, he and his future wife, Charisma, would go on to build a following of over 2 million people across various social media platforms.

After dating for a few months, Cole and Charisma decided to start a YouTube channel called Roll With Cole & Charisma. The YouTube channel originally started as a way to give their friends and family insight into what an inter-abled relationship looks like. What Cole and Charisma didn’t realize was just how much their story resonated with other people. After three years, they have amassed a subscriber base of over 600,000 fans on YouTube alone. [continue reading…]

NOTE: Minor Spoilers for both A Quiet Place films ahead

Noah Jupe, Millicent Simmonds, and Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place Part II

Los Angeles, June 3 – The horror genre is rarely a prime example of proper disability representation in Hollywood. However, Memorial Day weekend 2021 provided us with the release of the much-anticipated film, A Quiet Place Part II. After being delayed for more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sequel to the critically-acclaimed and financially successful 2018 horror-flick, A Quiet Place, was finally released. The horror series is about a world in which aliens with uncanny hearing attack Earth. The survivors must learn to live silently to survive. The stars of both films include real-life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt as well as Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. Millicent Simmonds plays Regan, oldest daughter of the family who is also Deaf. At the end of the first film, Regan discovers that the amplifying feedback from her hearing aid tortures the aliens and makes them more vulnerable.

Simmonds is Deaf herself and takes on a much bigger role in A Quiet Place Part II, as her character Regan steps up to utilize the signal from her hearing aid effectively in the fight against the aliens. Her character grows up significantly as she is forced to be braver and stronger after tragedy befell the family at the end of the first film. She also teaches a bit of sign language and another character how to enunciate so she is able to read their lips. The film triumphs not only in its accurate and authentic representation but in its portrayal as well. The audience cheers her and her hearing aid weapon on as she trudges through the dangers of the alien infested Earth. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 3 – Tyler Hoog is a 26-year-old screenwriter based in Los Angeles, California. Originally from Longmont, Colorado, Hoog became a C4-C3 quadriplegic when he was 17-years-old after a car accident caused a spinal cord injury. Hoog talks about his early adjustments to life in a wheelchair and praises his supportive family: “Honestly it was never a focus on if I would ever walk again. My mom did a very good job of really shifting the perspective where beforehand we were going to baseball practice, now we’re going to physical therapy.”

“My mom made it so there wasn’t a moment where we sat and felt devastated,” he continues. It was just ‘this is the situation, so we’re going to make some lemonade.’” [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, California, June 3 – Danny J. Gomez is an actor, model and advocate for authentic casting in Hollywood. Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Gomez was far away from the storied Hollywood sign and its accompanying industry opportunities. However, distance did not stop Gomez from pursuing his dreams.

Inspired by his favorite show at the time, Entourage, Gomez packed up his dreams and clothes and left the crawdad capitol, headed westward toward the Golden State. Gomez promised himself to make acting his top priority, but over time, he let the distractions of the industry detour his trajectory. It wasn’t until he acquired his disability, paralysis from a spinal cord injury, that he reevaluated his life and returned to fulfill his old promise.

Since then, Gomez has stayed true to his word and attached several acting credits to his name—most notably his appearance on NBC’s New Amsterdam where he played a paralyzed pilot. He has also participated in the Easterseals film challenges multiple times and continues to book acting roles. [continue reading…]