For Aussie actor, authenticity matters in portrayals of autism
Australian comedian Josh Thomas was just 17 when he won the competition at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival — and just 25 when, in 2013, he created and starred in “Please Like Me,” nominated for five Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards during its four-season run.
Now he’s back in the Freeform series “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” in which he stars as a young man named Nicholas who becomes the guardian to his teenage sisters, one of whom is on the autism spectrum, after the untimely death of their father.
Q: How much are you pulling from your own life for “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay”?
A: This one is not autobiographical at all, except maybe for some of how I act because that’s just how I would act in those situations.
Q: So then what was the inspiration for the show?
A: I wanted a show with autism at the center, and I think if you want to do a drama-comedy, teenagers are the best representative of what that is.
Q: What research went into getting into the minds of your teenage characters?
A: If you were a teenage girl and you came near me during that time, I would engage with you for a very long time. And then with the autism, of course I read a lot of books and went to some classrooms to interview teachers and teenage girls. For me, the really handy thing is you can go on the internet and watch people who are similar to your characters do things and see how they talk.
Q: Were you adamant about finding an actor on the spectrum to portray Matilda?
A: If you get someone who’s had shared living experiences with the character, it’s going to be better. Obviously if your character is slaying a dragon, then it will be hard to get authentic casting, but if your character is a teenage girl on the spectrum who lives in a nice house in a suburb, you should be able to find that. The good thing about having two kind of big characters on the show who both have autism is they are both really different: The characters, Drea and Matilda, are really different, and the actors are really different. So when you’re an outsider and you don’t know a lot about autism, you may be expecting a cliche or a trope or for them to be written a certain kind of way, but it’s an incredibly vast, broad spectrum, so it’s about finding specificity of character and finding more than one version to represent authentically.
Q: How much did the character of Matilda change once you had Kayla Cromer in the role?
A: She’s so helpful at helping me know what is realistic for someone with autism and what isn’t. Sometimes she will get dialogue she doesn’t understand, and that helps me know that’s something she probably wouldn’t say. She keeps me honest, which I think is really valuable. When you get into more adult territory like sex and touching, it helps to have open conversation.
Q: Speaking of exploring sex with teenage characters, let alone one on the spectrum, how did you run the show to ensure everyone felt informed and comfortable about performing such scenes?
A: It’s knowing the point of what every beat is when you film it and going in and explaining it. It’s about me being confident so people aren’t out there improvising. Especially with a sex scene, you want clear direction, and these days we have an intimacy coordinator around on set. It’s about shooting options, as well. (As a showrunner) you’re in a tunnel, and you make tiny decisions one after another and after another, and you hope they come together to make something that’s fine. So you make a decision, and you look at it, and if it doesn’t feel right you change it, and if it does feel right you do it again.