When Hollywood Is a Humiliation Ritual: Ryan O’Connell’s Journey to Getting His Own TV Show (Exclusive Excerpt)
Early on in my TV writing career I was sent out on a general meeting. Generals are like blind dates that can go one of two ways. One way is you meet with an executive who you have a genuine connection with that restores your faith in the business and actually leads to a job. The other kind is one where you meet with an executive, you tell rehearsed tidbits about your life designed to elicit warmth and laughter, they tell you they want to find something to work on together, something like the script you sent them that got you this meeting, but not that script because they had nothing to do with it, and in order for them to care about something, they have to piss all over it and feel a sense of ownership. They then give you validation for your parking instead of your work and you never hear from them again. This particular general meeting fell into the latter category. It went like this:
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Executive: OK, so, Brian, I’m literally obsessed with you????!!!
Me: . . . my name’s Ryan . . .
The executive blinks, not computing the correction.
Executive: I love your voice. So singular. But have you thought about writing a procedural?
Me: Like Law & Order? Um, gosh, I don’t know. It’s not really my wheelhouse . . .
Executive: Wheelhouse! That reminds me, Jen Aniston is a good friend of mine. . . . She loves houses . . .
Me: . . . yeah . . . I love Jennifer Aniston, too?
Executive: She’s my sister. SHE’S MY FUCKING FAMILY. Kinda like how you and I are basically going to be best friends. So. What kind of stuff do you wanna make?
What a great question. At this particular juncture, I was writing for Awkward, but what I really wanted to do was make a show about a gay disabled person. She looked confused and frightened by this revelation, like she’d just missed her freeway exit and Waze hadn’t figured out how to reroute her. She said, “Um, that’s — that’s cool. Hey! What about gay zombies? We’re really excited about exploring that space . . .”
“What exactly is the gay zombie space?” I asked, suddenly feeling that specific fatigue you experience from being around people who don’t get you and never will. She paused. A silence enveloped the room. Then, she leaned in and said, “You know . . . I really thought you would be more . . . exciting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your agents said I had to meet you, that you were just this hurricane of energy.”
This is an insane thing to tell someone. Still, I was disappointed in myself for not giving her the show she was promised. Not to be a liberal arts girl about it but, as a queer disabled person, the “on” button on my personality doesn’t have the luxury of being turned off. I am there to make everyone laugh and feel at ease about my physical presentation. Most of the time I enjoy it. At least I think I do. I like my personality, even though a lot of it seems to be shaped as a coping mechanism to having cerebral palsy. But sometimes, when I feel like I’m not being understood at a work meeting, it feels similar to being on a bad date where I can’t get it up. I don’t have it in me to dazzle them because their very essence makes me depressed.
The whole conversation with that executive felt like a parody of my industry. But to work in this business you sometimes have to experience small humiliations like that one. If I didn’t have this laser ambition to feature a gay disabled person on TV, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to endure it. I got into writing TV and film with the specific goal of making things that would’ve served as a balm for my younger self. So I treated every person who was obstructionist as villains in a game. Just defeat them and keep going.
Luckily, my first stroke of luck in Hollywood happened when my memoir got optioned. For a week, I was courted by high-powered producers who wanted to help turn my life story into a TV show. It was incredibly meaningful, especially after spending the first two years being overlooked for the queer undead. Ultimately, I chose the actor Jim Parsons and his husband Todd Spiewak’s production company to adapt my book.
But when I first went to Jim and Todd’s house in Los Feliz to meet them, I was terrified. After two years of working as a TV writer in L.A., I’d been exposed to my fair share of actors, and my instinct was to stay far away (unless I was being paid). Of course, there are many lovely actors who are curious and ask you questions about yourself and are normal, but a lot of them have been suffering from long-term main character energy and don’t have the magnetic personality to offset their narcissism. I sympathize. Later, when I went on to star in Special, I understood that there’s an entire ecosystem created to support an actor’s needs, which, of course, leads to coddling and infantile behavior. The industry helps turn them into monsters and then criticizes them when they behave monstrously.
To my relief, Jim and Todd ended up being lovely sweetie angel nerds, and I knew instantly I wanted to make the show with them. I couldn’t believe I was about to work with Jim, one of the biggest TV stars on the planet. No, sorry, that’s dishonest. I could believe it. Finding success in Hollywood as a gay guy with a limp felt so unlikely when I first came to town that I had to tell myself lies every day to pursue it. There was no plan B. Only plan cray. When I first entered the industry, I really did believe I was going to meet people like Jim and make TV shows and get everything I wanted. Why doubt yourself when society already does? I didn’t need to have negative self-talk when I could just go outside and be treated like an invalid by a stranger.
In 2015, it was common to take a TV project to networks like ABC, NBC and Fox first and then, if everyone passed, you went to cable. But I was terrified of a network doing a neutered version of my TV show. I’d heard so many horror stories about one of the big networks buying a show that’s left-of-center because oh my god, edgy, wow, what a hook, but then, through the notes process, execs would start to get scared and take out everything that made it unique. All of a sudden, it was a bland blob and then they would kill it. The thing that corporate bigwigs don’t always realize is that the more specific you are in your work, the more universal it becomes. By sanding down the edges to make it more palatable, it has no point of view, and then no one can see themselves in it.
I wanted to explore sex in Special. Being rendered dickless by society had caused me so much pain that I was determined to make something honest and sex-drenched that would ease that heartache. So we bypassed the networks and took Special to cable and streamers in the summer of 2015. It was the golden age of TV, which meant executives were apt to take big creative swings. Thank god because the Special pitch was, said with love to my younger self, psychotic. I shit on a guy’s dick during sex in the pilot. And, keep in mind, you’re usually pitching straight people in these meetings. Occasionally, you’ll get what my friend Jill calls “a basement gay,” aka a gay executive who’s junior and has no power, but otherwise the vibe is hetero. Still, with the exception of Johnny Knoxville’s #1 fan, every pitch I had went well. I would walk away thinking, Wow. I think we sold that! But then it would get sent up the flagpole to the HOWGIC (Head Old White Guy in Charge), and HOWGIC would say no.
It was crushing. A year of development and unpaid work and then, poof, it was all gone. Without a buyer on board, we didn’t have the money or anywhere for the show to air. Luckily, my producer, Eric, was actress-on-the-Oscar-campaign-trail levels of tenacious, and he was not going to be satisfied until the show was sold. Stage 13, a digital branch of Warner Bros. that served as an incubator for diverse talent and, as of this writing, has folded since Hollywood openly doesn’t care about diversity anymore, eventually said that they would commission me to write eight fifteen-minute episodes. Coming up with an entire season of television by myself with only fifteen minutes of real estate per episode was . . . humbling. Not only was I relatively new to TV writing when I started crafting the season, but I was also working through issues regarding my cerebral palsy in real time — issues I naively thought I had already dealt with in my memoir. I didn’t understand that being honest about who you are is only the first step. I also had to reckon with the psychological effects of being closeted about my disability.
“I don’t get this episode,” Eric told me in his usual gruff manner when he read one of my drafts. “Ryan goes to a pool party and nothing really happens? How does his CP affect him?”
“Well, it doesn’t. Being disabled isn’t his entire personality . . .” I said, defensive.
“So, you go to a pool party full of gay men and you never feel your disability once?”
I racked my brain for an answer, scared of what I might find. God. Had I really repressed that much? “OK, look,” I said, going into problem-solving Virgo mode. “I’m going to keep a diary and write down every time my CP directly or indirectly affects me. Maybe that will help.”
For research, I went to Palm Springs — a place that tries to make up for its bad food by supplying gay orgies on demand — and spent the day lounging by the hotel pool, waiting for something to happen involving my CP. Actually, “lounging” is not the correct word. “Ruled by anxiety because people were sitting on the edges of the pool and I couldn’t find a way to gracefully enter the water so I stayed baking in the sun getting burned because I was too disabled to put on the sunscreen myself and, HOLY SHIT, my cerebral palsy actually determines everything?!” is more accurate.
Now that I had my little assignment, I was noticing everything. Checking into the hotel, they gave me an ADA room which, thanks to my internalized ableism, I found offensive.
OK, write that down. I considered a Grindr hookup, but I didn’t want to have to deal with explaining my limp to a stranger. Yep, that’s going in, too. CP was suddenly center stage, dictating every decision. Was my life always this small and claustrophobic, and I hadn’t even realized it because it was all I knew?
Inspired, I furiously wrote the next few episodes of Special while continuing to keep the diary.
Once the scripts were finished, we sent them to Netflix, who were having a creative renaissance, making weird shit like Maria Bamford’s Lady Dynamite. They read the scripts and green-lit the show. If this all feels anticlimactic, it’s because it was. I had no idea Eric even sent the scripts to Netflix. I got a call when I was in gay purgatory (aka on the StairMaster), and he told me Netflix was going to make Special.
“Oh, and by the way,” Eric said. “You have to star in it.”
***
The culture of celebrity is like cotton candy: a few bites and it’s yummy, but then, before you know it, you end up with stabbing stomach pains. Being a part of this world costs you a lot. Not just spiritually, but financially. First, you have your publicist ($6,000 a month), whose job is to pitch you for inane lists like Variety’s “10 Virgos Under 30 to Watch.” Variety doesn’t just come up with the people on their own. A PR woman named Emily was pushing hard for it to happen.
Then, you often pay a stylist when you have to attend events. If you’re promoting your TV show or movie, the network usually pays for half of it. A top-tier stylist typically costs $1,200 per event, to dress you in an outfit that you have to return. Then you get hair and makeup: $500. I can’t do math (gay), but I think this means it costs influencers/celebrities several grand to go outside and attend something like a Tillamook Cheddar Young Hollywood party. Of course, you don’t need a stylist. You don’t need hair and makeup. But when everyone else is getting it, there’s a pressure to play the game. If you pay enough money to tell the world you’re important, then, abracadabra, you will be.
Just as press for Special was dying down, we were nominated for Emmys. I found out at the gym (why do I keep getting important news there?) and was obviously emotional, because getting that kind of recognition is legitimizing but, most importantly, I knew this meant we would get renewed for a second season. I’d been blabbering to the press about how the fifteen-minute episodes weren’t my idea, and that I would only consider doing half-hour ones for season two. I wasn’t trying to be a brat; I just wanted the real estate to tell a complete story.
Netflix listened. They called to tell me I was renewed and going to get my half-hour episodes. Then, before I had time to say “yay,” they told me season two was going to be the final season. Which meant that Special was renewed and canceled on the same phone call. Renanceled. It was not the news I’d been manifesting on my vision board, but I appreciated the heads up because going into season two, I was able to finish the story how I wanted to. (Also worth mentioning: Netflix supported me 100 percent creatively and let me do whatever I wanted. This is rare and often does not happen in this business!)
With season two officially a go, I now had two jobs: making another season of television and campaigning for an Emmy. I had no idea how the awards sausage got made and, after I experienced it firsthand, I’ve become a vegan. Basically, you funnel thousands of dollars of your own money into the awards campaign. Hello again, publicists and stylists. And Sonja, my amazing hair and makeup artist, who was at my house practically every day taking me from “alcoholic corpse” to “I think I found where your chin ends and your neck begins.” One time, while wearing a face mask, Sonja did energy work on me and I basically leaned over in my chair in a trance and thought, Huh. My life is kind of different now. For so long, my dream was to be Nora Ephron, not Meg Ryan. But here I was, suddenly a public-facing person, paying someone to put shit on my face while they realigned my chakras. In the back of my mind, I just kept thinking, This period will end. I am owed a flop era.
It came, eventually. Not after the Emmys, even though I didn’t win. And not even after Special wrapped. Because from Special, I wrote a novel, sold a couple of TV shows, and wrote and starred in the reboot of Queer as Folk. The treadmill was still going at rapid speed. While shooting Queer as Folk, I wrote the film adaptation of my novel, which was allegedly shooting after Queer as Folk came out. My life was mapped out a year in advance, which is what everybody dreams of because it means guaranteed work.
Then everything went kablooey. Queer as Folk and my novel came out. Unfortunately, I got Covid on my novel’s release day. (I found out right before my appearance on CBS Good Morning, when we all got tested in the studio. Gayle King got Covid, too. She called me later at my hotel and said she was really looking forward to asking me about rimjobs.) My press tour had to be canceled. Not like it would’ve helped much.
Queer as Folk got a mixed reception and was not renewed for another season. (I could enroll in Sarah Lawrence and write a thesis as to why.) Financing for the film adaptation of my novel was pulled. Everything I had going on just . . . died. My calendar was, for the first time in years, wide open.
Everyone speaks to feeling like a failure before they’ve Made It. No one talks about the failure people still experience after success. Maybe because of insecurity. You want to project an image of “Everything’s great. I was given the keys to the castle and now it’s green light after green light.” But the lack of discussion around the ebbs and flows of any long-term career made things feel especially painful. Was I the only person who once had a TV show and now couldn’t get staffed? Maybe I should’ve played the game more and gone to the Tillamook Cheddar Young Hollywood party. Maybe I should’ve accepted the invite to fashion week in Milan when I was writing season two of Special. Maybe I should’ve done a better job performing my identity.
The most valuable thing money buys you is time, and the upside of working so much was that I had a good chunk of cash saved up that allowed me to think about my next steps.
I spent the next year disentangling my self-worth from my productivity. I spent what medical professionals would call a quirky amount of time in New York — a place that has more texture than a company town like Los Angeles — and I slept around with boys, made new friends, and actively participated in my life, rather than just watched it from afar while being interviewed by Queerty about bottoming. I started to write the bones of these essays. I’d finally tended to the garden of my personal life and it was blooming. Now, look: I think my work will always be, on some level, intimate. I can’t imagine writing a generic workplace comedy (although don’t be mad if I do, mama has a mortgage). However, I felt like I owed people my trauma on demand, like a soft-serve station. I needed to earn my keep, maintain my spot as a marginalized person in this business, and that meant constantly diving into my pain (for free) so that Hollywood could give itself a pat on the back for letting me in. But that’s not healthy or sustainable. I don’t owe anyone anything.
From INSPIRATION PORN, by Ryan O’Connell. Copyright © 2026 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
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