Life of RYAN
One of the undoubted highlights from the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Special is (spoiler alert) a scene where Ryan and his bestie Kim, played by Punam Patel, perform a touchingly tender version of rapper Lil’ Kim’s tongue-tastic How Many Licks?.
“The big quandary of life is: how many licks does it take?” series creator, writer and star Ryan O’Connell ponders, playfully. “We just don’t know, and we’ll never fucking know. I think that’s why we get up in the morning and why we go to sleep. It’s huge, it’s existential.”
Naturally, I need to find out what the last thing Ryan licked was. “That’s a really good question,” he replies (well, lies). “Probably my lips. Isn’t that boring? I’ve been in a writing K-hole and I feel like I’m just always licking my lips.”
Catching up over a video call – having assured Ryan that, no, despite my wan, washed-out appearance, I am not in fact, a Victorian child ghost – the LA-based scribe is preparing to say goodbye to his Emmy-nominated comedy drama, which sadly won’t be returning for a third helping having been “renancelled” (Ryan will explain).
Based on his 2015 memoir, I’m Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, the series (exec-produced by Jim Parsons) follows a young, gay, disabled man called Ryan – who, like real-life Ryan, was born with cerebral palsy – as he goes after the life he wants. Living up to its name, the “little show that could” has changed the televisual landscape.
Looking ahead to his impossibly bright future, Ryan, 34, reflects on representation, why it was so important for him to portray gay sex in such a frank and unfiltered light, and getting sober (and, as a result, hotter) during lockdown.
One of the notable differences between season one and two is that you have extra wiggle room: the episodes are now half an hour long. From what I gather, that was – I think ‘bone of contention’ is the wrong phrase to use, but you didn’t want to make more 15-minute episodes, right?
Well, I was pretty Veruca Salt about it! I was open in the press and all my interviews, like, “No, I didn’t like doing 15-minute episodes, it wasn’t my journey, it wasn’t my medium.”
See, I come from the land of half was conceptualised as a half-hour show, it was never meant to be a 15-minute show, and I feel like the version I did in season one was still, sort of, quietly, a half-hour show. It was just me cramming literally everything in, everything but the kitchen sink… So, the rumours are true, if you just complain to enough press outlets, you can get pretty much anything you want [laughs].
