If there’s one thing the repeated backlash over ‘another white Bachelor’ has taught us, it’s that our appetite for diversity on screen has never been more salient.
It’s no secret that television’s carbon-copy casting formula is growing obsolete and oversaturated. From First Nations to queer Australians, there are many communities that we want to see platformed.
In their new show Latecomers, SBS is championing the under-represented disabled community.
In their new show Latecomers, SBS is championing the underrepresented disabled community.
(Image: SBS)The show’s plot follows two strangers with cerebral palsy, Frank, played by Angus Thompson, and Sarah, played by Hannah Diviney.
You may recognise the latter name as the disability advocate who spearheaded the campaign against Lizzo’s ableist slur in her recent song Grrrls, prompting the singer to change the lyric entirely. Now, the 23-year-old is headed for the small screen.
“After watching their carers hook up at a bar, Frank and Sarah decide to explore their own relationships with sex, and each other,” the series’ press release reads.
“Latecomers is at once an expression and representation of the intricacies of sex and disability.”
According to Hannah, who has cerebral palsy herself, the show’s creators have had “representation and inclusion front of mind” since the beginning, when producer Liam Heyen asked her to read Sarah’s lines.
“He was basically just looking for disabled people to come and read the script so that the writers could hear the words that they’d spent so long writing in someone else’s voice and sort of work out what wasn’t working and what was,” she explains to TV WEEK.
The former drama kid inside of Hannah jumped at the chance, thinking her acting journey would start and end with the table read. That was until her impressive performance scored her an audition.
“I never thought that acting was a legitimate pathway for me,” Hannah confesses. “Probably because of the complete lack of visibility and representation of disabled actors across the board.”
Indeed, growing up, the advocate’s only form of representation was via the character of Artie Abrams in the TV show Glee, who was portrayed by able-bodied actor Kevin McHale. When Hannah found out that the performer could walk, it was like getting “punched in the gut”.
WATCH: Hannah Diviney reacts to Beyoncé removing ableist slur from her song. Article continues after video
“To be able to be part of something that is created by people with disabilities, and that was partially directed by people with disabilities was incredible,” Hannah says of Latecomers.
“I never thought that I would be the person helping to lead that charge and kind of create something that we hope revolutionises the Australian film television industry, but also creates waves internationally if we can make that work.”
While labels bring together communities, they also have a destructive tendency to pigeon-hole someone’s identity. So often is the case for people with disabilities, whom despite having interests, sex lives, and so on, are reduced solely to the moniker of ‘disabled’.
As such, Latecomers is adamant on representing the intersectionality of sex and disability in a way that many of us have admittedly dismissed in the past. When reading the script, Hannah was “blown away” by the boldness of the sex scenes.
“To be able to be part of something that is created by people with disabilities, and that was partially directed by people with disabilities was incredible,” Hannah says of their show.
(Image: SBS)“When it actually came to mapping out those particular scenes, we made sure it was a very conscious decision between our director and everyone involved that there would be no sort of honing it in or just insinuating that stuff happened, the 23-year-old tells us.
“We very much wanted to show it and to kind of sit the viewer in it, if that makes sense. Particularly for Sarah as a character, it was really important to show her being confident and in charge and putting her pleasure front and centre.
“And then making sure that there was lots of room and scope given to the fact that her body obviously looks different than the average, or that consent is super important because that should be a dialogue that should be a key moment of all intimate themes moving forward.”
Along with establishing consent, the show also makes a conscious effort to use inclusive language in its script, with terms such as “people with vaginas” replacing that of “women”.
For the 2021 Women of the Future finalist, it’s important viewers recognise the ways in which the show is “inclusive outside of the context of disability”, while also acknowledging the importance of championing people with disabilities at the centre of the story.
“I want people to take away from Latecomers that people with disabilities are full people, that they have rich lives and that they want the same things as anybody else,” Hannah concludes.
“Disabled people aren’t perfect and angelic, we are messy. We make bad decisions. We say things in the heat of the moment that are just as f–ked up as anybody else.
“I think if we can show people that people with disabilities are more than whatever stories or box they’ve created for us in their heads, that will be really good because hopefully it will spill into the real world. And it will also mean that the Australian television industry creates more content with disabled people at the centre of it, both in front of and behind the camera.”
You can watch Latecomers on SBS Viceland and SBS On Demand on Saturday 3 December – the International Day of People with Disability.
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