Disability Representation On Stage and On Screen with Rachel Handler

Rachel Handler is an award-winning actor, writer, and director in film, television, and theater. Since becoming an amputee in a car accident in 2012, she has worked to incorporate the experience as a disabled member of the filmmaking community into her work and sought to expand disability equity within arts organizations, corporations and school groups.

With her new film, Derailed, entering the festival circuit, Handler tells us about her experience, her supportive community, and her efforts to broaden inclusivity in arts and media.

Jessica Hobbs: Starting with a vague question—what’s your artistic background?

Rachel Handler: I look at my life as before amputation and after amputation, so there are two different answers. But I have a background in musical theater, I’m a singer, and I’ve always been interested in performing and telling stories. When I was three years old, my uncle wrote in my journal, “Keep singing, you sound beautiful!” So, at three years old, I was already singing for my family. I put on American Girl plays in my backyard, and I was always the director and did rewrites and was the star of the show, so really, nothing has changed.

I studied musical theater in college and started working in regional theaters and doing a lot of classic musicals, like The Music Man and Oklahoma, and I was loving it. I moved to New York in 2010, and I was auditioning constantly and getting callbacks for Broadway and off-Broadway, and then my accident happened in 2012, and everything changed. I felt like everything I had been working towards was put into question.

I had never seen a prostatic leg. The day of my accident, I was laying in the grass on the side of the road after being hit by a car, and I knew my leg was gone. I couldn’t see it, but I knew, it had been amputated on impact. My first thought was, "how am I going to be on Broadway now?" It wasn’t, “oh no, now I’ll never be on Broadway”—it was, “how am I going to do it now?”

I was already planning my future with my new body in mind.

JH: Shortly after that, you expanded to working in film as well as theater. What were the challenges you were facing in resuming your career, and how did you work begin to expand?

RH: It felt like a huge transition from only doing theater to being a film actor. It took about a year to recover and get my bearings, but the whole time I was singing and dancing on one leg, and continuing my artistic practice, because it’s the only way I knew how to live.

I started auditioning again and did a few plays, like Measure for Measure, that was my first full production coming back, and it felt so good, but it was so hard. My leg was still giving me problems, I had a skin graft that was breaking down, and I was having bone spurs growing where bone shouldn’t be growing. It was a big adjustment to realize that healing is not linear, it’s a curvy journey.

I started doubting if I could be a reliable theater actor. I wasn’t thinking of using crutches or a wheelchair, I was determined to be walking on two legs, and that just wasn’t an option at that point. I was figuring out how to be an artistic, creative person when I was doubting my physical stamina.

That’s when I got an audition for a movie called Smothered. I had been registering as a disabled actress everywhere I could find, trying to put myself out there and embrace being disabled. A casting director in New Orleans found me for an indie movie directed by John Schneider, but I had never auditioned for a film before, but they liked my look, and I got really into the character, and I booked the job. I had the best time, and even though it was July in Baton Rouge, and I was sweating, and it was miserable outside, it was less physically demanding than theater. I was able to sit down and take breaks between takes, I could take off my leg and let it rest, and I felt like I could handle it. And it was fun!

That taste of what it was like to be on set made me think it was okay to transition to film while I let my body heal. Maybe it’s not giving up on theater, it’s just adding something new into my life. I almost brainwashed myself into thinking I had to work in theater, but film was such a nice addition.

JH: When did you start writing and directing in addition to acting?

RH: That role was so serendipitous, and I knew I wanted more of that, so I started writing. The Easterseals Disability Film Challenge started in 2014, right when I was transitioning to film and embracing my disability. I’d had stories in my head before that, but had never completed a script. So, I made my first short film: I wrote it, got a guy I knew with a camera to shoot and edit it, and I won best actor that year in the film challenge.

I felt like I was being embraced by a community of my peers of fellow creatives with disabilities. A story I created out of my brain is touching people and making an impact. I’ll always be an actor, but now I’m adding writer and producer to my hat.

JH: How has the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge changed over the past few years?

RH: It’s grown exponentially. The first year I did it, I think there were five films entered, now it’s over one hundred. It’s amazing to see how popular it has become and how much it’s grown in industry awareness—now the sponsors are Adobe and Sony and Microsoft. The prizes are unbelievable, the industry connections are unbeatable, it’s an incredible film challenge. It’s so rewarding.

In the weeks after you make the film, there’s an awareness campaign to promote the films, and it creates a great sense of community. Yes, it’s a competition, but look what we all created.

We’re under-represented, even though 25% of Americans identify as someone with a disability. On screen, 2% of characters are written with disabilities. There’s such a huge gap, but look what we can make in the span of a week. It’s an amazing celebration. That’s why I keep doing the challenge year after year.

JH: Your latest film, Derailed, is a short about the frustrations of using the New York City subway system, given how many stops rely on stairs and do not have an elevator or escalator. Do you feel that New York is particularly difficult in terms of accessibility?

RH: I do, because people here rely so much on public transit, and getting around by car is so expensive and time consuming. There’s something called Access-A-Ride, which I joke about in the film because it’s so unreliable. It’s a transit service for New York City, but once I took it from Astoria to a rehearsal in midtown because I was in a lot of pain that day and couldn’t deal with the inaccessible subway stops where I had to walk up the stairs. That trip took me from Astoria to Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan to midtown. What should have taken an hour with traffic took over two hours, because there are multiple stops picking people up and dropping them off along the way.

JH: What are some of your favorite films or shows that handle that representation well?

RH: Not much is handling disability representation well, and a lot of it is about white men. But I do love "Sex Lives of College Girls." Lolo Spencer is so funny and fabulous, and I wish her role was bigger. I think they handle her disability well because they don’t mention it much, because it’s not really necessary.

I thought they did a good job with "Locke & Key" on Netflix, which is about an Autistic character, and they cast authentically. Sometimes when the character is a child, the parents take over the storyline, and that wasn’t the case here. My friend Eric Graise was on the show, he’s a double-leg amputee, and the disability is a part of his character, but not part of the story. Now Erick is starring on "Tracker" on CBS.

As an actor I’ve been so lucky to work on cool TV shows and films, and I will say, in the past two years, it’s been incredibly slow, and I haven’t been getting auditions unless it’s disability specific. Luckily there are more disability specific roles. Up until last year, I had been booking at least one TV show a year, but now I haven’t done a studio or network thing in almost two years, since "Interview with the Vampire."

I wonder if there’s a correlation between less stuff being filmed and more disability-specific roles being written, so now there’s less room for disabled actors to play any role. There’s a new Netflix medical drama that’s going to star a friend of mine who uses a wheelchair, and they were only auditioning people who use a wheelchair in their daily lives.

I respect that, but I wish there were more opportunities for all of us.

JH: For other creators who may be incorporating disabled characters into their stories, what are some things to avoid or be cautious of?

RH: If you’re writing characters with a specific disability, it’s helpful to have someone with that disability as a consultant. Research that specific disability, talk to someone with that lived experience, and of course cast authentically—but don’t expect the actor to do rewrites for you. That’s not their job.

If it’s too intimidating to write specific disabilities, just cast actors with disabilities in any role. There’s no reason the mom of the leading child actor can’t have a disability, most of the time. I want more inclusive stories, but really, I want more inclusion in general. It doesn’t have to be, “This character is disabled because she had cancer, so I must learn everything about cancer and amputation!”

It can be a part of them, but not the main focus of the story.

JH: How about for producers bringing on disabled crew members?

RH: That should keep happening. I remember walking onto set for the TV show "Best Foot Forward" for Apple, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw other people with physical disabilities. I knew they wouldn’t be staring at me or asking what happened, they would just treat me as an actor on set. The more representation there can be, the more comfortable everyone will become with inclusivity.

Often sets are not the most accessible, but because there’s heavy equipment, there are some accommodations that are already being met, like ramps or covers, laying over the thick, heavy wires, so there’s more accessibility already built into sets than you might realize.

JH: What’s something you want the broader industry to know about the disabled community, and specifically the creative community?

RH: I’d like people to know that creatives with disabilities are some of the most adaptive and ingenious people I’ve ever worked with. We live in a world that is not designed with accessibility in mind, so every day something comes up that we have to adapt to—the same way that on film sets, something comes up and you’ve got to adapt or change the plan.

There’s a term floating around, “mental horsepower,” and for those of us with physical disabilities, specifically, since that’s what I can speak to the most, I think of it as, “My leg is hurting, and I’ll have to cook on crutches, so I’m going to have to plan where I’m going to sit, what to gather to sit, when I chop vegetables, how far is that from the pan with the oil ...” etc. I’m going to plan things more carefully than if I were on two legs. We’re super creative because we’re constantly creating with new things to adapt to.

With Derailed, I was on my feet a lot, and it was a very hot day, and we’re shooting this guerilla style, without a place to sit down and relax. A lot of times on low-budget, indie projects, accessibility needs are kind of thrown to the wayside. On our set, we wanted to make sure everyone had what they needed to do their best work. We convinced a coffee shop to let us sit in there for air conditioning, there was a shoeshine shop we sat in during different set ups, so we never pushed anyone to work beyond what they were comfortable with.

A lot of times, I’ll start a shoot with an access check-in: you gather the cast and crew, like a safety meeting at a new location, and you communicate any needs you might have. You can say, “My knee is hurting, it’s not going to be easy to squat or kneel today.” It just takes a few minutes, and when everyone is seen and heard, their work is going to be better, and things are going to be moving faster.

It’s worth it in the long run.

JH: What’s next for you?

RH: Derailed has entered a few festivals, and we’ll start hearing back in the next few weeks. We’re looking to partner with a few organizations to promote accessible transit, since this film has a call to action at the end, where we hope the audience will relate to the journey and spark awareness of the emotional and personal implications of inaccessible transit.

Yes, it’s annoying, but it’s also much more than that. I’m hoping this can be a springboard to a feature-length film, where this character, Isabel, finds love and some other things happen, without giving too much away.

I’m always hoping my films will spread awareness of whatever issue I’m tackling. I try to explore a facet of the disabled experience that isn’t seen or talked about.

Andy & Kaliope, my film from 2022, was about kids in foster care. Unlucky in Love was a musical about a cross-disability relationship and how scary it can be to be diagnosed and reveal that to your partner. Best Friends Forever is about an actress with a disability who decides to fake more disabilities in order to play Helen Keller in a Broadway musical. It’s very silly and pokes fun at the fact that there are so few roles written with disabilities.

I have two pilots I’ve been working on, both single camera comedies. One is called "Lame," sort of like "Sex and the City" meets "Special"—the quirky friendships meets the crip comedy. I’m also working a script called Cripping Up, which is based on the short I did for the disability film challenge, the one about the fake disabilities to play Helen Keller, and I’ve started writing a feature film on the dramatic side. It’s about a woman who experiences a miscarriage, then decides to train for a triathlon. It’s set in a future where we no longer have the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), and women are losing rights. So, it’s expected for a woman to have a baby, and it’s looked down upon to be married without children. Training for the triathlon helps her confront her own expectations and find joy within herself, rather than within her marriage or ability to have children. That’s been cathartic to write.

And I’ve been in a lot of sports films lately. This summer I was in a feature film called No Limits, about a young boy with a disability who’s a baseball player, and one about a woman with a heart condition deciding to be in a huge bike race called Road to L’Etape du Tour.

I love these sports films with a disability twist.

*Feature photo by Qinza Malik Khan