Last July, I posted an interview here with Josh Sundquist about his involvement in the Apple TV+ show Best Foot Forward. The show chronicles the adventures of a middle schooler named Josh who has a pathetic leg. Sundquist, who has limb differences, explained to me in our conversation last year the majority of the storylines in the show are based on his own personal experiences as a middle school adolescent.
Sundquist and I met again over videoconference recently to discuss his participation in another new series, an animated show for Netflix called Mech Cadets. The series, which premieres today, is described by Netflix as involving a “an underdog teen joins a group of young Cadets who’ve been chosen to bond with Robo Mechs from space and defend Earth against alien invaders.” As with Josh in Best Foot Forward, one of the galactic heroes has a disability by way of a limb difference.
For Sundquist, who lends his voice to the character Frank, what’s especially resonant about Mech Cadets is how limb difference is depicted. Oftentimes, Sundquist said, amputees are always wearing a prosthetic or shown as a villain—if the disability is mentioned at all.
“What was amazing about this character [Frank] is that he isn’t wearing a prosthesis,” Sundquist said. “I regularly get sent auditions for acting roles typically on on screen rather than animated. The characters, 100% of the time, are written as wearing a prosthesis. There’s nothing wrong with wearing a prosthesis—most amputees do and they’re really useful devices. It’s interesting to me that when writers of shows think, ‘Let’s put an amputee character in our series’ that it never occurs to them that there might be a way to be a limb different person in the world that doesn’t involve wearing a prosthesis. Although its great disability is increasingly represented onscreen. I still never see anyone who looks quite like me onscreen that is not wearing a leg and using crutches.”
Sundquist went on to say he believes it’s “super cool” that children growing up today are able to see people on television with disabilities—in the case of Mech Cadets, a limb difference. “I can say I’ve never, ever seen an action hero in an animated series using crutches—and not a prosthesis,” he said of the amputee experience onscreen. “I’ve never seen it. It feels to me personally, groundbreaking and revolutionary.”
Aaron Lam, who serves as executive producer and a writer on Mech Cadets, described to me his desire to create a show about “outsiders and underdogs” to a certain extent. The notion is incredibly personal to Lam, as he’s the son of Chinese immigrants and spent his formative years growing up in Florida. “As an Asian kid in Florida, you always kind of felt like an outsider,” he said. While Lam wanted the characters to be diverse and authentic in their representation, he was self-aware insofar as he realized he couldn’t credibly write from the disability point of view because he isn’t disabled. Undeterred, he sought to add someone to the writer’s room who could credibly write the disability vantage point.
That person turned out to be Ashley Eakin.
Eakin, who wrote two episodes in the first season, is a disabled person who has a rare bone disease and has undergone over 25 surgeries in her lifetime. When she found out the writers wanted to incorporate a disabled character, she became extremely excited. Her lived experiences, she told me, proved an asset in formulating a character that reflected a real disabled person. “I am so embedded in the disability community, and I know all these people who have these disabilities, and it was really exciting that there would be this representation for younger audiences,“ Eakin said of working on Mech Cadets. “I think growing up, not seeing people who have different bodies, it really changes your experience in life when you don’t have any representation. It’s very exciting to me… it’s really cool to have this authentic voice to the character.”
Lam was keen to emphasize that although disability obviously is an important component to the makeup of Mech Cadets, it isn’t the show’s major focal point. He told me what was important to him was to “normalize” different perspectives and types of people, citing the fact that aside from Frank being disabled, the other characters are Chinese, Korean, and Puerto Rican. This portrayal is important to him in part too because Mech Cadets is primarily catered towards younger audiences, and the show runners wanted to, again, expose children to people of varying backgrounds and perspectives. “We were definitely looking for other groups to tell stories about and round out the cast,” Lam said of the show’s diverse casting. “I still felt guilty about dominating [the show with] an Asian story, so it’s really as simple as that we were looking for other underrepresented voices to kind of put on screen.”
Eakin concurred with Lam’s sentiments, adding that she loves how Frank was selected “to kick alien ass” because he was one of the best people for the job regardless of his disability status. Moreover, she said this flies in the face of how disability is traditionally shown on film and television; oftentimes, disabled people are moribund and pitied and applauded for overcoming their own bodies. Mech Cadets, Eakin said, isn’t inspiration porn in the slightest. Instead, disability is part of life.
For Lauren Appelbaum, who works at the disability-led nonprofit organization RespectAbility, she joined in the cacophony of enthusiasm for disability’s role in Mech Cadets. In a new interview conducted via videoconference, Appelbaum explained her love of her team being brought onto the project so early on in development, in summer 2020. “It was fascinating to see how one of the leads has had a disability, but they were still determining, like exactly what that disability would be, [as well as] exploring different themes with them very early on,” she said. “It allowed us to be involved in multiple facets. I love that this was a story not focused on disability, but included a disabled character who had a full personality; the focus was not on his disability.”
(There is one pertinent side note to address. In discussing Mech Cadets, Appelbaum was clear in disclaiming RespectAbility is currently only working on projects unaffected by the ongoing WGA-AFTRA strikes.)
When asked about disability representation in Hollywood, Appelbaum said most people have a “healthy fear” of disabled characters because although the desire may be there, the fear lies in promoting inauthenticity. What Lam, Eakin, and team do right with Mech Cadets, Appelbaum told me, is disability is made part of the “greater conversation” rather than being singled out. Disability is presented matter-of-factly as simply part of life. “One of the one of the storylines that I really love is like the rare nuance of letting you wear a prosthetic via choice,” she said. “It delves into important topics for people who are amputees, whether they were born as an amputee or later became one, and of autonomy of bodily choice and allowing that conversation to be examined at a level that families can understand. Children watching the show, they can be like, ‘Oh, I get it!’ Whether they have an amputee or disability or anything, it’s something that is relatable—making that choice of how you want things to be attached to your body.”
Echoing Lam and Eakin’s comments on instilling valuable lessons in children as they watch Mech Cadets, Appelbaum is excited to watch the show with her 8-year-old daughter. “I’m really excited to sit down and watch the series with her and seeing it through her eyes,” she said.
As for the studio and Netflix, Sundquist, Lam, and Eakin all noted Netflix has been very supportive throughout the creative process in making Mech Cadets. Executives pushed and encouraged the team to write and cast the show to be as authentic and real as it could possibly be, with Lam lauding Eakin’s addition to the team as a cool glimpse into a community and experiences that he didn’t previously understand. Sundquist noted the support from everyone into creating characters, especially Frank’s, that he said was “really well executed.” For Eakin, working on Mech Cadets was her first “proper writers room” and, piggybacking on comments from Lam and Sundquist, told me it was “amazing to see the dynamic” with the other writers and have her lived experience be an asset in driving story and character development.
Going forward, everyone I spoke to for this story shared their own spin on how they’d like to see film and television progress even further in authentically and earnestly portraying disability. For his part, Sundquist reiterated just how “proud” he is to be associated with Mech Cadets, as he’s so impressed with how Frank was developed and shown on screen.
“I think our goal you know with with Ashley, Josh, and everyone who worked on the show was that we wanted everyone who watches the show—no matter you know what color you are or where you come from your background—that you can find a little something in each one of the characters, that there’s a little traits,” Lam said of his hopes and dreams for Mech Cadets. “We try to put that into every character. I think at the heart of it is it’s a story about underdogs, which is like marginalized groups or, you know, minorities—we’re all underdogs to some degree. I think it’s a great story about underdogs trying to achieve their dreams, trying to do what they want to in life. I just really love it… I love it so much. I’m very proud and happy of the work that we all did together. I’m hoping audiences, when they get to see it, will love it as much as I do.”
“It’s [Mech Cadets] beautiful,” Eakin said. “It almost makes me tear up.”
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