SPEECHLESS Creator Scott Silveri on Staying True to His Family Story and a Visit to the Set #Speechless #ABCTVEvent
http://www.fsm-media.com/abc-speechless/
Highlights:
How did your family react knowing you were gonna write a show that’s based on your experience?
They were really incredibly supportive about it. I made it clear from the beginning to them, as I try to make clear to anybody else, this is not their story. This is not my story or my brothers or sisters. What’s important to me is to capture a couple of elements about the time we had growing up. I feel like you can take whatever challenge is thrown your way and wallow in it or turn it into something. You can curse the heavens or you can band together and make it work. And that’s what my mom did. That’s what my dad did. And I wanted to celebrate that at every turn. This (the show) is intended to be a love letter to my mom and my dad. It really is meant to be a loving depiction of our family. When I first showed them (the show) it wasn’t flattery or vanity, like there’s gonna be a famous actress playing a version of me or it was just "Oh, it’s gonna be a family like ours on TV," and that’s fantastic, because so much of the experience of families like ours was just feeling invisible, you know, and not being heard. I don’t think that’s unique to disability, but it’s certainly the experience of a family with somebody with disability. It’s like people either stare or ignore.
[On the show's child actors:]
It’s hard to find kids that aren’t like cutie pie. I feel super lucky with these guys. They’re real. They can carry scenes. And a lot of shows you’re lucky if you have one character who can go out in the world and mix it with them. We’ve been careful, and deliberate about stretching and having them go out and giving each of them the opportunity. And they — to my estimation, they can do it.
Can you talk about the relationship between Kenneth and JJ.
They just hit the ground running. In the early iteration of the script, there was no Kenneth, (JJ) spoke through a computer. Then I met a woman who’s since become a consultant on the show. Her name’s Eva Sweeny. It’s far more common these days to use a device and iPad. The technology’s unbelievable in the way it enables communication. When I was a kid in the ‘70s, there would be a board on somebody’s wheelchair and it’s like "I want milk." "I want bathroom." And that’s like it. People have more profound things to say and it’s incredible the way technology’s being used to empower these kids to speak. But, it’s a choice. There are a lot of different ways to do it. This young woman I met, Eva, is the one who I first saw communicating this way, and it was through an aid, and it was this odd thing. She prefers it. She finds it to be warmer. She finds it to be more conversational and there’s a flow to it. I liken it almost to like it’s like vinyl versus an MP3.
How does it feel to know that you nailed it (the show and telling the story)?
I can’t agree, and I feel like we stretch out in different directions. We get it right. We get it wrong. But I will say the reception that we’ve gotten from families in this community has blown my mind. And I was, I was prepared for the fear because that’s how I feel like when I watch. There’s so many ways to get this show wrong.
What’s the vetting process that you go through like when you’re trying to decide the — if something’s taking it too far or being politically correct?
I think that the mechanism is simply we ask people who lived this stuff, who live in the advocacy world. Um, we ask them. For instance, early on Micah, the actor, is working on walking. He has been for a long time. We thought well, if all the things that you see on TV, all the arcs that, you know, I’m gonna get a job at Bloomingdales, we’re like wouldn’t that be an interesting thing to do? Then we kicked it around for a while and I talked to a couple of people in the community, and they’re like, ehh, I’m not sure that you wanna go there especially early — ’cause we don’t wanna make it a story about overcoming a disability.
That’s insight that I don’t have. So, we’re doing our homework and asking the questions, but in terms of like — generally the things that make us afraid are the things that we’re running for. Like sexuality and disability. That’s somebody nobody wants to talk about we really wanna get this kid dating. When I talk to Eva, I was like, well, what kind of things should he [JJ] be doing? And she said, well, he’s 16, he should wanna date. He should rebel. He should wanna be popular, wanna make friends. He should be out making mistakes. And so early on we had like drinking, we had him like driving a car when he shouldn’t be.
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Additional set pix and comments:
http://www.5minutesformom.com/122288/speechless-set-visit-interview-speechless/ http://momstart.com/2016/11/meet-the-speechless-cast-see-the-speechless-set/http://www.trippinwithtara.com/speechless/http://momspark.net/on-the-set-of-abcs-speechless/http://rwethereyetmom.com/speechless.htmlhttp://acadianasthriftymom.com/2016/11/30/the-day-i-met-minnie-driver-on-the-set-of-abcs-speechless/http://asthebunnyhops.com/behind-the-scenes-of-speechless/ http://www.babymakingmachine.com/2016/11/abc-speechless-set-visit-interview.htmlhttp://www.mommymusings.com/abc-speechless-set-visit-interview/http://www.shesaved.com/2016/11/speechless.html/
http://dirtyfloordiaries.com/speechless-set-visit-cast-visit/ (poor Kyla! )
http://southernbellasways.com/2016/11/new-abc-show-speechless-set-visit.htmlhttp://funtasticlife.com/speechless-set-visit/http://allmommywants.com/behind-scenes-cast-speechless/http://www.vivaveltoro.com/2016/11/speechless-set-visit.htmlhttp://abccreativelearning.com/speechless-set-visit-cast-interviews-abctvevent/Some good shots of the "Dead to Maya" list! (Upper left corner reads "Mentioning My Mother" and "Mentioning YOUR Mother" -- I'm guessing the latter is presumably directed at Jimmy... Also, I wonder if anybody else noticed that Jimmy wrote "male baths" twice, but Maya only crossed off one of them.)
"I know I'm not normal -- but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
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