Deeper Diversity, Bigger Laughs: Ryan O'Connell on Season Two of 'Special'

Ryan O'Connell – an alum of the "Will & Grace" writers' room – wrote and starred in a short-form comedy series for Netflix last year that garnered acclaim and Emmy nominations for both O'Connell and the show itself. The series is "Special," and it centers around O'Connell's character, Ryan Hayes; his mother Karen (Jessica Hecht); and his best friend Kim (Punam Patel). "Special" is back for a second – and, sadly, final – season on Netflix starting May 20.

Ryan is a young writer who's just getting out on his own after a lifetime of being fussed over by his mother. Because the character – like his creator – has cerebral palsy, there are certain everyday tasks that are difficult or impossible for him. Peeling an orange or unboxing a delivery present tough challenges.

Karen is Ryan's mother, and she has had a hard time letting go. Not only has Karen taken care of her son in ways large and small (and painfully intimate, as we saw in a Season One episode that featured a clogged toilet), she's also had to care for her aging mother, who has been slipping into dementia. It's only natural that Ryan and Karen should have some codependency, and boy, do they ever. "Special" finds comedy, as well as drama, in that complicated (and evolving) relationship.

Kim is a large, curvy Indian-American woman with a gift for writing clever, viral articles. That makes her a star at Eggwoke, the online publication where she and Ryan both work. Being a professional woman of color, Kim feels it's necessary to maintain a certain look – and that, in turn, means she needs a large budget for clothing and shoes. A budget, that is, that far exceeds her earnings; hence, Kim struggles with a problem far too many Americans will readily identify with: Massive credit card debt.

Season Two's episodes are twice as long as those of Season One – a full half hour – and with this larger canvas to work with, O'Connell is joined by five other writers. The synergy that results puts the show at a new level. "Special" has flashes of HBO's "Looking's" mix of romantic hunger, relationship angst, and personal insecurity, all given a comedic glow. And speaking of "Looking," none other than Lauren Weedman – who played the hilariously sarcastic Doris on that series – joins "Special" for the new season, as do a host of other guest stars, including Charlie Barnett ("Tales of the City," "Russian Doll"), Max Jenkins ("Dead to Me"), and Leslie Jordan (of "Sordid Lives," "Will and Grace," and, more recently, Instagram fame). It's a lineup that helps the show pop like never before.

EDGE caught up with Ryan O'Connell recently to hear about the show's writing and casting, and learn what the talented writer-actor-showrunner has got planned next.

EDGE: Season Two has eight episodes, like Season One did, but now there's twice as much fun because each episode is half an hour as opposed to 15 minutes. What was the thinking behind that shift?

Ryan O'Connell: If I did my job correctly, it should feel like twice as much fun and not torture! It was great [to expand the length to half an hour]. I felt stifled by the fifteen-minute format; I felt I couldn't really so what I wanted to do creatively. I re-watched a little bit of Season One for the first time in, like, a year the other day, and I'm really proud if it, but man, it moves so quickly! I think that helps, in a way; there's never a dull moment. But I was excited to have things breathe a little bit more and have moments land, and not have the character development be so rushed. Also, I was excited to dive into the character of Kim and not have her just be an emotional cheerleader for the character of Ryan.

EDGE: That longer format lets you bring in more of the real-world problems we all might have to deal with – like, being thousands of dollars in credit card debt.

Ryan O'Connell: Who hasn't been, you know? It's very relatable!

EDGE: This second season is also the last. Is that because, as your character Ryan Hayes says in the first episode of the season, "Having CP is NBD?" Is it just time to do something else?

Ryan O'Connell: Well, no – I mean, it wasn't my decision to end the show. That was Netflix's decision. And we knew very early on that it was going to be the final season. I was, obviously, very disappointed – I kind of, in my mind, always conceptualized three seasons of the show, but it was, in a way, a blessing, because I was able to tell the story in a complete way. I feel like we got everyone to a really great place, and creatively it does feel like the end of the show.

EDGE: Yes, the ending feels satisfying, and true to life. There are some fairytale elements about the show, which are comfortable and nice, and yet the series does hew to a feeling of these people being like us, and going through the same things we do.

Ryan O'Connell: Yeah, I think we dive into a lot of issues, but in my writing I never want to be didactic; I never want it to be an issue-driven show. Obviously, there are things that Ryan experiences around his disability; obviously, there are things that Kim experiences being curvy, and being brown. But it's called "Special," it's not called "After School Special," for a reason.

[Laughter]

Ryan O'Connell: I never want to create a marginalized character who just becomes a hologram of their suffering, so even though Ryan and Kim experience a lot of shit, I always want there to be an undercurrent of joy and of hope, and I want it to feel good.

EDGE: Ours is still a deeply ableist society, and "Special" has been a real landmark in programming that challenges that.

Ryan O'Connell: Yeah. It's very bittersweet, because I'm happy to bring that representation, but I also feel like this shouldn't be making history. It's frustrating being one of the only people that is disabled and in a power position of showrunning and creating a show. The numbers are very bleak in terms of disabled representation, and it's also hard being a part of Hollywood culture where, in the last five or six years, things have changed; conversations around race and gender and sexual identity have deepened. We know the status quo is not enough. But it's been very frustrating to see disability always be left out of the conversations of diversity and inclusion. When "Special" ends, it not only ends as a TV show, I think it's probably the only show with a disabled lead played by a disabled actor, created by a disabled person. And the fact that once "Special" is gone there will just be none of that – it's a very bleak to me, and not okay.

EDGE: You wrote all of Season One episodes, but for Season Two you're joined by several other writers. How did it feel to throw open the doors to the writers' room and welcome others in?

Ryan O'Connell: It was a relief. Being the only writer on Season One was very stressful, even on the logistical level – like, whenever there'd need to be little tweaks, because when you're in production things shift all the time in terms of what you have to do. Not having a script coordinator, not having any of that kind of support put in place to help, was extremely stressful. It just felt like immediately, starting from Day One, it was such a relief to have others who could help me. I feel like everyone's voice benefited the show in such an extreme way – I feel like Season One might have felt a little myopic just because it just came from one person, and it was really exciting to be able to open it up to other perspectives. I think everybody was on the same page about creating stories from characters first, rather than identity first. And also, out of the six writers, three of them identify as disabled – including me, obviously – so that was really exciting, too.

Also, I just spent four months laughing with gay men and women all day, which was my version of heroin.

[Laughter]

EDGE: Season Two has a fantastic lineup of guest stars – Lauren Weedman joins as Karen's new roommate, Tonya; Charlie Barnett, who is wonderful in everything, plays a pretty significant role; and you even have Leslie Jordan! You and Leslie Jordan have a "Will & Grace" connection – is that how he came to be on the show?

Ryan O'Connell: I was a writer in "Will & Grace" and, yes, he shot an episode [while I was with the show]. I never talked to him. That whole year I was working on "Will & Grace" I was pretty much quiet – I think I was really overwhelmed by the magnitude of working on that show, so I saw Leslie Jordan work, but I was too shy to say anything to him.

EDGE: How did you get all these great people? Did you have actors phoning you up and saying, "I want to be on your show!"?

Ryan O'Connell: Honestly, I'm very aware of a lot of amazing actors – like, "She's got her finger on the fucking pulse!"

[Laughter]

Ryan O'Connell: Lauren Weedman is someone who I've been a fan of ever since I saw "Looking." She actually auditioned for the role of Karen in Season One, but she wasn't quite right, but I was like,"I'm gonna write something for her." So, the character of Tonya was written for her. And I was such a fan of Charlie Barnett from "Russian Doll," and I ran into him at a party one time, and he was like, "I'm such a fan of 'Special,' and I was like, "Oh my god, honey, I'll write you a part.' So then I wrote him [the part of] Harrison. Max Jenkins was a friend of mine, and I'd always wanted to write him something because he's so deeply talented, so that role was written for Max.

A lot of it was just me wanting to hire people that either I admired and was such a deep fan or, or was close friends with, and also a fan. And we had such a great cast. Everyone just slayed the day.

EDGE: My next question is about Max Jenkins, actually. There's such great chemistry between you and him, and his character is so incredibly lovable. Out of the two or three love interests Ryan has this season, I'm totally team Tanner!

Ryan O'Connell: Wow! That's really good that you said that. I wanted the audience to feel complicated feels about that relationship, because I think there are a lot of positives, and there are a lot of negatives. When I write conflict, my rule is always "Both parties need to be right." Like, everything they say, the audience is, "Point made!... Point made!," so that your alliances are always shifting, because that feels very true to life. Nothing is black and white. We always exist in an area of gray. I feel like, with Tanner, the man is a complicated character; he is kind of damaged, but he's also so lovable, and his intentions are so good. I'm always interested to see how people take that – is the audience excited to see Tanner? Or is the audience hoping for Henry [played by Buck Andrews] and Ryan to get together? The more complicated people feel towards things, the more excited I am.

EDGE: Everyone's got such juicy character arcs. Did you sketch them all out from the very start, or did you have to sit down after the end of Season One and say, "Okay, where should everyone go from here?"

Ryan O'Connell: It's always an evolution. Things change all the time, I think we had a blurry watercolor on where we wanted to go. I knew I wanted Ryan and Karen to start the season still separated, because family rifts are [such a source of drama]. And I knew I wanted Karen to reconnect with someone from her life that would kind of serve as a Ryan stand-in – someone that she was sort of being forced to take care of. But in terms of the minutiae, the story's nuts and bolts, I think that evolved over time. I think Kim's journey was the most elastic – I had a fixed idea of for Karen and Ryan, but with Kim it was really exciting because we had a character we didn't really get to explore in Season One and now we could, so there was a feeling of, "We're being spoiled! We can take her anywhere we want to go!"

I think thematically, though, I always wanted there to be cohesion amongst the three characters, because to me Ryan, Karen, and Kim are three very different people, but their journey is [similar] – giving them permission to take up space in a world that has kind of whittled them down. Even though their journeys look different, emotionally they are all grappling with the same thing.

EDGE: What else do you have coming up?

Ryan O'Connell: I have a few things in the pipeline. I actually just started working in the "Queer as Folk" reboot.

EDGE: Wow!

Ryan O'Connell: Yeah! I'm super excited about that. My friend Stephen Dunn created it, and I am super, super excited because the original "Queer As Folk" traumatized me at age twelve, and really, really deleted my self-esteem. So, I'm excited to create a more inclusive version of it.

I wrote a novel that's coming out next year ["Just by Looking at Him"], and is now being adapted into a film produced by Greg Berlanti ["Love, Simon"], so I'm starting on the screenplay for that. And I sold a show called "Accessible" to HBO Max that we're waiting to hear back about whether it gets picked up for pilot. It's a high school comedy taking place at a boarding school with all disabled students. It's gonna be fun.

EDGE: What a slate of projects! I'll be looking forward to them.

Ryan O'Connell: Me too!

[Laughter]

"Special," Season Two, streams at Netflix starting May 20.