We have this data preselected in our head. We, as individuals, are often on Tinder or an equivalent type of dating app, and we think we know what we’re looking for. Rossiter: I didn’t want to matchmake on this show. When you’re casting, you also have to find dates who might be compatible matches, right? We went to bridge clubs, we went to libraries, we went to bookstores, we tried to go to places that weren’t necessarily top-level meat-market destinations. What would this more “woke” outlet do with the topic of dating? The other thing is that we asked our casting directors not just go to bars and nightclubs. We had casting people go out on the streets of New York, we had posted fliers, and people were more interested in the notion of doing a Netflix show. One of the things that helped us to find people is that Netflix had carved out a brand already that was non-exploitative - a little smarter, a little cooler, a little more sophisticated. What we want now are ordinary people in ordinary circumstances. We’d put them on a desert island to win a million dollars, or we’d put them on fantasy dates in helicopters to see if they’d fall in love. The old mantra inside the business was, we’d take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary circumstances.
Rossiter: Audiences, whether they realize it or not, are ready for a new type of unscripted television. They’re still sexy! They deserve romantic love!Ĭould you tell me about the process of casting the show?
They’ve become invisible not just on TV, but in our world. Seniors, not older people who are 40 like me, seniors, who are often overlooked. We got along really well in our interview and I said to them, “I am interested if you will let me work with gay people, and especially with older people.” It’s never what the creators of shows or buyers of shows are interested in doing, investigating the stories of people who aren’t traditional television fodder. I thought, Oh, they’re two straight dudes, and that’s who always makes up dating shows. I’d say no, and I’d say no, and I was so sure of myself that I was right that I never wanted to do another one.Īnd then Chris and Paul came to me with this one. Basically every creator of a dating show had come to me to see if I was interested in their shows. I decided to leave three years ago, and I decided to never do another dating show.
I did a decade on The Bachelor and all of its spinoff-y shows. Rossiter: I have a dating-show background. That allowed us to show the distinct differences between how people date, but also the universalities, too. We wanted to offer up a diversity of the characters - different backgrounds, different ethnicities, gay, straight, a whole range of different people. We didn’t want to present a cast you’d see on every other reality dating show out there. We wanted to look at the dating landscape in 2019, and give an honest glimpse of what it’s like to be single in a world of infinite apps and infinite choices. ‘I hope it doesn’t get cancelled like other similar shows,’ a user warned.How did you develop the show? Where did the idea come from?Ĭulvenor: We were speaking to Netflix very early on about what a dating show for 2019 would look like, and we knew we didn’t want to rehash all the reality-show tropes that’d been done for years and years. LGBT people come in all different shapes, sizes, and forms, we’re not all the same person.’
‘As a gay man with muscular dystrophy I wasn’t prepared for this but I’m so happy it exists and I can’t wait,’ one said.Īnother user said: ‘We need this. LGBTI twitter users poured in to show their love for the series, due to drop on 12 April. O’Connell’s book, published by Simon & Schuster in 2015, won critical acclaim for its witty breakdowns of modern life and acerbic observations of millennial culture. He’ll also star in the show, alongside Jessica Hect, Punam Patel, Marla Mindelle, Augustus Prew, and Patrick Fabian. Green-lit in March last year, O’Connell began his writing career on MTV’s Awkward and since went onto write on shows such as Will & Grace.
Ryan O’Connell wrote, executive produced, and stars in Special - a semi-autobiographical series about a gay man with mild cerebral palsy. In it, he pretends to be the victim of an accident in order to grab what he believes is the life he wants. It will follow O’Connell’s life growing up and living as a gay man living with cerebral palsy. The streaming service ordered eight episodes of the show based on O’Connelll’s menoir, I’m Special: And Other Lies We Tell Oursevles. Series creator Ryan O’Connell plays the leading character in the semi-autobiographical 15-minute comedy.
Netflix released the trailer for Special, the first-ever TV series centred a gay man with cerebral palsy yesterday (25 March).