Ryan O’Connell Talks Queer Sex, Pushing the Envelope, and Special season 2

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May 28

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The following interview and photo set appeared in WUSSY vol.09.
To see the full feature, order your copy at the link here.

Ryan O’Connell describes himself as the “Nora Ephron of gay sex” and delivers. His conversational style of writing, spotlight on personal subject matter, and wit, he’s kept the late writer alive for a new queer generation.

“I just love all her essays. She was sort of like the original blogger,” O’Connell remarks. “Her voice was so bloggy.”

O’Connell shares Ephron’s same bloggy voice that permeates everything from his Instagram captions to the dialogue in his show to the way he speaks. With his genuine grin and openness to any topic, talking to O’Connell is like chatting with your sexually experienced friend at a sleepover. A voice he’s had from the beginning and one that gained him a following online.

As an editor and contributor at Thought Catalog a decade ago, O’Connell produced hundreds of blog posts sharing intimate and comedic details about queer life, love, and pop culture to an audience that grew with him. With a massive portfolio of writing that includes some viral features and essays, O’Connell had a book published at twenty-five. That same memoir would then go on to inspire the script for Special that landed him a deal with Netflix. Now, O’Connell gears up for the release of the highly anticipated second and final season of his show this spring.

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Taking a look back at his blog posts that started it all, O’Connell says, “...sometimes I do revisit and most of the time I’m embarrassed by all of the writing I did, but sometimes I’ll read something and I’m like, ‘She knew what she was doing’... the person that wrote all those pieces had so much to say and had so many feelings and just felt the need to express every single one of them. I can’t really relate to that. I felt like a huge, big gaping wound in my twenties, which luckily I don’t feel anymore... I mean I was dealing with a drug problem. I was mostly celibate. I was closeted about my disability.” O’Connell says the community created at Thought Catalog made him ‘feel less alone’.

In 2015, O’Connell published his lauded “Coming Out Of The Disabled Closet” piece to Thought Catalog that would make waves and garner positive attention online. In the blog post, O’Connell writes that he has a book coming out that wasn’t the “Urban Outfitters Book You’d Put In Your Bathroom And Only Read If You Were Really Desperado” proposal that he had originally pitched to Simon & Schuster. Instead, he wrote a memoir called I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves that discussed his cerebral palsy for the first time.

“The response from [the blog post] was so overwhelming,” Ryan shares. “Honestly, I felt my first initial reaction was like, I felt kind of stupid because I had been carrying around this secret and this weight that caused me so much pain. And what I realized through publishing the piece was that no one cared at all. I could have been out of the disabled closet much sooner. That being said, regrets aren’t my journey.”

The piece caught the attention of The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons (or Jimbo as O’Connell calls him), who would go on with O’Connell to produce the eight, fifteen-minute episodes of Special. Semi-autobiographical, the show revolves around a fictionalized version of O’Connell who also has a disability and is gay. The main character, also named Ryan, deals with his relationship with his overprotective mom, first sexual experiences, and him not telling the full truth about his disability to his co-workers and friends.

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Immediately, the show broke new ground in disability and queer representation. In particular, the third episode portrays an incredible sex scene between Ryan and Shay, a sex worker played by Brian Jordan Alvarez. In the scene, Ryan hires Shay to have to have sex for the first time. As difficult as a sex scene between two (or more) actors can be to accomplish on its own, O’Connell explains that he faced additional challenges as a person with a disability. “When we shot that scene, we shot it in half a day. It was really intense, honestly. What I didn’t realize about acting is that you have to do something eighty times. So if there’s a scene when you’re getting undressed from a suit per se, that means you’re going to have to get undressed 80,000 times. And as a disabled boy, that’s a journey. Having to actually unbutton your shit and get out of your pants and get naked over and over again, I mean holy shit, by the time I was on my back I was officially on a Club Med vacation. I was overjoyed.”

This intimate moment would go on to be called “revolutionary” and “trailblazing” by the press for its positive portrayal of sex work and a queer person with a disability having sex. In response to whether or not O’Connell knew the sex scene would become such a big deal, he recounts, “I think when we were shooting that it did feel, for lack of better word, special… [then] you get your first cut of the episodes, and you kind of want to cry because the first cut is the deepest...she’s not runway ready and even at its most bare form that scene was incredible. I watched it and was like ‘Oh, my god. This is without the bells and whistles. This is without anything and it’s still so fucking good.’ I’m really proud of it.”

Looking at the second and final season, some excellent news is that the episodes will be thirty minutes long. We’ve been promised the expansion of Ryan’s world and more gay sex, so the more time the better. From the first teaser of the new season, the plot and guest actor roster looks juicy. Ryan seems to be in a love triangle with a new character played by Max Jenkins and the beloved Leslie Jordan also fills out the cast.

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While getting season two of Special off the ground amid a pandemic, O’Connell is also in development with Parsons and HBO Max for a project entitled Accessible. Described as a teen “traumedy,” the show follows a fifteen year old girl who attends a boarding school with students of all different disabilities. On where he is at in the process, O’Connell shares, “I’ve written the script, so actually right now we’re just waiting to hear back to see if we can get the okay to shoot the pilot….I was really inspired by what Pose did for the trans community in terms of employing so many trans actors and having the narrative really be focused on them. And I really wanted to do my version of that with the disabled community. If it does get made, it’s going to be fucking major. And I really hope it does because it will change some things in the business and the industry. First and foremost, the set will be accessible which is unheard of.”

If filming the final season of Special and developing a new show wasn’t enough, O’Connell wrote his first novel this past year as well. Just By Looking At Him, set for release in spring of 2022, follows the story of a thirty-something television writer with cerebral palsy struggling with alcohol dependency. When asked about how he landed on a novel instead of another script, O’Connell explains, “I did not set out to write a novel at all. It was April. It was very early pandemie times and Special had just shut down production and I was feeling let’s say a little aimless, a little lost, a little existential dread vibes. And I just thought you know I’d been writing pilots and stuff like that for so long and working in tv for so long that I really kind of wanted to just try a different medium. There was something about a novel that I found so luxurious and kind of fun. I never tried to actually write a novel, I just wrote 1,000 words a day. I didn’t have an outline. I didn’t have an idea for a story. ….It was one of the more blissful writing experiences I had.”

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No matter the medium, O’Connell’s work has always been vulnerable, self-referential, and bloggy. He writes so honestly about his feelings and life hurdles, and that’s what makes him so attractive as a person and talent. Like many of us, O’Connell recalls seeing Ryan Phillippe’s ass in Cruel Intentions as the moment of his gay awakening. When I ask about how he feels about his ass doing the same for a new generation, he says, “As a creator, you always want to make the things you wish you had growing up. Growing up with Ryan Phillippe’s ass, while delightful, you obviously wanted more in terms of queer stuff. All I had was Queer As Folk, which reaffirmed these fears I had about gay society being judgmental and being very focused on looks...and I was like, wow I’m not going to do well here, like message received. So I think if someone watches the sex scene in Special and feels okay about themselves or feels represented… that’s why I’m here.”

“There’s so much that still has not been examined and still has not been portrayed on screen. And while frustrating as that is, it’s also deeply exciting as a creator who can still not only push the envelope but hopefully cum all over it.”

Special season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

Photography by Ryan Pfluger @ryanpfluger
Grooming by Sonia Lee for Exclusive Artists using Kevin Murphy
Styling by Andrew T. Vottero @atvottero
Production Assistance from Meg Chase @videodisease

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