[by Melanie Johnson]
Sometimes an actor with a disability, namely Breaking Bad’s R.J. Mitte, may find the perfect role early on, but for many, it’s a struggle to make it in an industry where disability is still stigmatized and inaccurately portrayed.
R.J. Mitte, who plays Walter White Jr. on the hit AMC TV series Breaking Bad, has more in common with his character than viewers may know.
Mitte, like the character he plays, has cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent, nonprogressive disorders associated with developmental brain injuries that can, to varying degrees, inhibit the body’s motor functions.
While his character has a more acute form of cerebral palsy than he does, Mitte plays his character with an authenticity and believability that can come only from personal experience.
“My character’s cerebral palsy is more severe than mine is now,” he said. “But I’ve been there. I’ve had the crutches, the braces, the chair. I’ve been through it.”
Mitte’s personal manager, Addison Witt, who has been working with Mitte for the past seven years, said he recognized that Mitte was perfect for the part as soon as he saw the casting notice.
“We received the breakdown of the character, and when I saw it, I said, ‘Bingo, this is it,’” Witt said.
Mitte, then 13, had been acting in Los Angeles for only a few months when Witt suggested he audition for Breaking Bad. Mitte had moved to Los Angeles with his mother and sister to launch his sister’s acting career. He said he enrolled in Witt’s acting classes mostly as a way of meeting people his own age.
“I got started in acting as a fluke,” Mitte said.
Witt said Mitte had a natural ability for acting. Mitte was a fast learner who kept a positive attitude even after going on auditions and not getting cast, he said. Witt knew it was only a matter of time before the right role for Mitte came along.
“I remember saying to R.J., ‘There is one role for you that will be undeniable.’”
That role turned out to be Walter White Jr. on Breaking Bad.
Sure enough, Mitte auditioned for and landed the part of White Jr., but it wasn’t without proving his acting chops first, Witt said. Witt said Mitte had to audition five times for the part of White Jr. In his final audition, Mitte flew out to New Mexico to read for the show’s creator Vince Gilligan. He got the part after that reading.
Witt believes Gilligan was initially skeptical of casting Mitte because Mitte seemed “too normal” for the role. According to Witt, it’s this normalcy that Mitte brings to his character that distinguishes Mitte’s portrayal from so many other TV portrayals of people with disabilities.
“This portrayal is more true to life,” Witt said. “He’s not playing up the cerebral palsy — that was an adamant decision on R.J.’s part. R.J. wanted to show that a person could have a disability and be as normal as anyone else.”
Still, because Mitte’s cerebral palsy is not as severe as his character’s, Mitte had to train for the role. Mitte said he had to “regress” to a more difficult state of cerebral palsy to play White Jr.
“I had to try remembering everything that I went through as a kid when my cerebral palsy was more severe,” he said. “I went back in my memory to a time when I had to use crutches. I was super skinny, and I had to wear casts because I was always breaking something.”
Mitte said his experience on Breaking Bad has helped him to recognize how far he has come, both with his disability and in the entertainment industry. “Every day I wonder, ‘How did I get in this position?’” Mitte said. “And honestly, I don’t know how it happened. I feel so lucky. I love this job. To me, this is the best job in the world.”
Witt said Mitte has used his success to help others by becoming an advocate for performers with disabilities. Mitte was the spokesperson for Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts’ I AM PWD (Inclusion in the Arts and Media of People with Disabilities) Campaign, which sought to promote the advancement and employment of performers with disabilities through access, inclusion and accuracy.
“There’s still a lot of prejudice against people with disabilities in the industry,” Mitte said. “But I feel that we are making steps. We’ve just got to keep talking about these issues, increasing awareness and living our lives.”
Speaking up for Actors with Disabilities
Gail Williamson is a disability rights advocate, who believes, as Mitte does, that change is happening within the entertainment industry. Williamson is the director of Down syndrome in Arts & Media, a casting liaison service for people with Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities. Williamson became an advocate for actors with disabilities after her son, actor Blair Williamson, entered the entertainment industry at age 10.
Williamson said finding representation for her son, who has Down syndrome, was extremely difficult when she first started looking in 1990.
“I started looking for agents, but they were all turning me down,” Williamson said. “They said, ‘There’s no work for people with Down syndrome.’”
Williamson said it was Blair’s headshot photographer who ultimately saw Blair’s potential and found him his first talent agent. Blair has been acting consistently in TV and film roles ever since.
“He’s 33 now, and he’s been in a lot of shows,” Williamson said. “He’s been a guest star on ER, he’s been killed on CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), he’s had a nose job on Nip/Tuck. He has quite a lot of credits on his IMDb page.”
But Blair’s career has slowed in recent years, which Williamson attributes to Blair’s getting older and increased competition for roles. With more actors with disabilities in the business, and with a limited number of roles for these actors to play, Williamson said it’s often difficult for actors with disabilities to find work.
A 2011 study of overall diversity on broadcast networks conducted by GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) revealed that only five series regular characters were people with disabilities. This makes them just 0.08 percent of all regular characters on network TV.
David Harrell, disability and programming associate at Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, said this percentage accurately reflects how challenging it can be for actors with disabilities to find work in a highly competitive industry.
“If you look at employment statistics for actors with disabilities, you’ll find that the numbers are incredibly small,” he said. “It’s difficult because there aren’t really a lot of acting jobs, in general. It’s already very difficult to be an actor — with or without a disability.”
Yet, while network TV has fallen short in including diverse characters, cable TV is showing signs of progress. HBO’s Game of Thrones, AMC’s Breaking Bad, ABC’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Switched at Birth all feature characters with disabilities being played by actors with disabilities.
Williamson said this increase in roles on cable programming might be the result of directors becoming more open to working with actors with disabilities. She said it might also be that society is becoming more accepting of people with disabilities.
Harrell agreed. “As we become more aware and more inclusive as a culture, I think the film and TV industry will come along with us,” Harrell said. “As we become more aware of difference, changes in the industry can be made more comfortably. As our knowledge of a larger world opens up, our storytelling opens up.”
Looking Back to Look Ahead
One way that Harrell and others at Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts help to spur discussion on disability is by partnering with other disability rights advocates and groups. In October 2012, Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts collaborated with Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and disability rights activist and media spokesperson Lawrence Carter-Long to produce a special one-month exploration of disability in film.
TCM’s “The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film” featured 20 films ranging from the 1920s to the 1980s. The films explored a variety of aspects, themes and types of disability, including blindness, deafness and intellectual or psychiatric disabilities.
Harrell said the film study, which aired every Tuesday night in October, explored past preconceived notions of disability and looked at society’s progress in how we think about and portray disability through film.
“It’s a way of looking back and seeing what attitudes on disability were like more than 20 years ago,” Harrell said. “It’s about recognizing that we’ve really changed as a culture and that films have changed to reflect that.”
Lawrence Carter-Long, who curated “The Projected Image” and is an actor with cystic fibrosis, said the series helped audiences study inaccurate past portrayals of disability in order to encourage healthy, realistic portrayals in the future.
“What we’re doing is looking back to pay it forward,” Carter-Long said. “We have to understand where we’ve been to chart a new direction — to chart a course for where we need to go.”
Carter-Long said he became involved in “The Projected Image” project after an associate at Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts reached out to him about pitching the idea to Turner Classic Movies. Since 2006, TCM has dedicated one month toward examining how different cultural and ethnic groups have been portrayed in cinema. But up until 2012, they had never addressed disability.
TCM responded enthusiastically when Carter-Long and Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts pitched their idea to explore disability in film. Carter-Long said the goal of the film series was to deconstruct the many stereotypes on disability that have persisted in the film industry for decades.
“There’s obvious trends that have happened throughout our cultural history and in cinema,” Carter-Long said. “People with disabilities have been seen as monsters and outcasts, like in Hunchback of Notre Dame or Phantom of the Opera. They’ve also been painted as heroes because of returning veterans. They’ve been portrayed as victims, where everything’s a tragedy and a burden.”
Carter-Long said it’s tiresome to be cast in these clichéd, one-dimensional roles. “You get stuck in these two extremes of superhero or pathetic,” Carter-Long said. “Or you have to be the ‘inspiring’ character. And doggone it, it’s exhausting to be inspiring all the time!”
Williamson said having accurate, three-dimensional portrayals on TV and in film would help audiences begin to see people with disabilities as regular people and. give children with disabilities an opportunity to see on-screen characters whom they can relate to.
“And why shouldn’t a kid be able to turn on the television and see someone who looks like them?” Williamson said. “We need to show children with disabilities that there are people who look like them out there, so that they realize that they’re not alone.”
Competing with Actors of all Abilities
Yet, even when a TV show or film features a character with a disability, there’s no guarantee that the character will be played by an actor with a disability.
“It’s accepted that you at least make it available to the people with disabilities first,” Williamson said. “But there’s nothing that says the actor with the disability will be cast just because they have a disability.”
Carter-Long said casting nondisabled actors is problematic because disabled actors already have limited roles available to them in the first place.
“Every time a nondisabled actor plays a disabled character, they are taking a role away from a disabled actor,” Carter-Long said. “Fortunately, the entertainment industry can’t really get away with this any more.”
Carter-Long said the TV and film industries are now making a greater effort to give actors with disabilities priority in playing characters with disabilities, in part, he believes, because of the negative attention some shows have received from casting nondisabled actors in those roles.
“No show wants to be tagged with negative press,” Carter-Long said. “And they’re starting to realize that casting an actor with a disability is a benefit, not a hindrance.”
Adam Moore, equal employment and opportunity director at SAG-AFTRA, the nation’s largest labor union for screen actors, agreed that audience response has a lot to do with changes in the industry for performers with disabilities.
“Audiences are deciding that there are certain things that aren’t acceptable anymore,” Moore said. “Just like when we said, ‘We’re not going to accept blackface or the stereotyping of Latinos,’ it also goes for disability. Audiences don’t buy into those inaccuracies as much anymore.”
Witt said an actor with a disability shouldn’t be hired solely because he or she has a disability, but because he or she is the best fit for the part.
“The acting roles should go to the most skilled actor, who conveys the truth of the character better than anyone else,” he said. “There needs to be more ways to enhance opportunities for people with disabilities to audition, but, just like any other actor: They have to prove themselves.”
An Optimistic Future
Williamson believes change is coming in how people perceive and respond to disability. She said she will continue her advocacy services because, even though opportunities for actors with disabilities are expanding, change isn’t coming quickly enough.
But Moore said, although they still have a long way to go, the film and TV industries are moving in the right direction.
“Clearly we have to take advantage of this positive trend and work toward making disability less scary to people,” he said. “The goal is to eliminate fear through education, through humor and through successful ventures.”
Despite past setbacks, Lawrence Carter-Long, too, is optimistic. He said it’s up to those who care about disability rights to take collective action and let their voices be heard.
“We’ll have to use every tool in the tool kit, so that people see the changes we need to make,” Carter-Long said. “But we’re right on the cusp of a brave new world,”