Tackling a new subject

Speechless, a sitcom about a ragtag family with different quirks, which centres around the ups and downs that come with raising a child with cerebral palsy, will be hitting Indian television screens soon. Actress Minnie Driver, who plays the mother May DiMeo and creator Scott Silveri speak about how the show came about and Minnie’s accent!

Q For Scott — we’re curious about how you’ve learned to work with different comedic rhythms which we see on the show.

SCOTT:  It’s something new and exciting. I think a lot of the rhythms that we play with has to do with how so much of communication in general is nonverbal. And JJ’s an expressive guy. I’ve been doing romantic comedy for so many years. It’s 20 years of milking, like, the three girlfriends I’ve ever had. And this is a time to draw on other life experience, and it’s a time to write scenes that I’ve never done before. It’s a challenge, and it’s one that we embrace because it’s going to be part of what makes this special.

Q Minnie, you’re known for bringing a certain sass and style to your characters.  Was that mostly on the page for you, or did you add certain things to it when you met with the producers and writers?

MINNIE: You know, when I read this, it is a high degree of difficulty to pull this particular character off, because she’s a lot. And someone said that ‘Speechless’ refers to JJ, the character’s nonverbal situation, but also Maya renders people speechless with the stuff that she says. I think  I understand her.  I’m a mother.  All mothers fight hard for their children. To have a child with special needs, you have to fight so much harder, from everything that I learned.  

Q For the producer, where did you get the idea for, and how did this all come about?  

SCOTT: For me, it’s a question of writing what you know. I came from a family with a brother with special needs.  I worked with different versions of it over the years. What I know is the challenges, the ups and downs of growing up with a family with a sibling with special needs. I know how it’s the same as other people’s experience, how it’s different from other people’s experience, what’s so funny about it.

Q Minnie, in developing this character, what was your decision to use your real voice?

MINNIE: We tried reading it American and British.  The funny thing is, you know, you have a particular rhythm in your own accent, but the real truth is you can get away with a lot more when you speak with a British accent. I think seeing English people get angry is always funny.

Q Scott, can you talk about the casting of Micah’s character and why you picked him and what you were looking for? And also, Minnie, it seems that the mother of a child with special needs has to be really tough.  

SCOTT:  Micah did us a real solid in putting himself on tape and making the decision as easy as he did. I saw him, and he just lit up the screen.  He was effortlessly funny and endearing. And he gave us everything we were looking for. This is a story that I’ve been wanting to tell for 20 years!

MINNIE: I think that when you have to push as hard as Maya has to push    and any mother with a child with special needs — you kind of blaze a trail, and you do leave often quite a lot of burned bridges. In the typical world the things that you or I would take for granted, a person in a wheelchair, for example, they can’t take that for granted. It’s a very funny, but extremely poignant, part of the pilot where the egress to this public school is the trash ramp. It would make me crazy if that were my child.

Q For the producers.  You talked about your own personal experiences, and you’ve talked a lot about tropes you want to avoid on the show — what does your writers’ room look like?

SCOTT:  We have a lot of people on staff who have experience in this world, whether it’s having siblings or special needs children. We want people who can speak to this experience, but at the same time we’re very clear, it’s not like the disability show.  

It’s a show about being different, and not apologising about being different and embracing who you are.  There are so few representations of disability on television, so you can’t help but feel the responsibility of doing it in an informed  way.

(Speechless will air on Star World from November 26th every Saturday at 10:30pm)