Creator and star of You're My Hero portrays the comical side of living with a disability

Sean Towgood created the Canadian comedy series You're My Hero with the intention to show the audience a more complete picture of people living with disabilities, by using humour as a way to portray the ups and downs of life with cerebral palsy, he says.

The show premiered on CBC Gem in 2023, with the aim to shake up prevailing views on what it means to be living with a disability in the 21st century.

Ian, the lead character played by Towgood, is an angsty, blunt, unfiltered 20-something navigating the social pressures of life in an unforgiving world not designed for wheels. Like the character he portrays, Towgood has cerebral palsy, uses a motorized wheelchair and is very funny.

"I wanted to write a character with a disability that reflected my experiences and that other people could look at as someone who reflected theirs," said Towgood, who lives in Toronto.

And like many young men today, his character lives with his mom, doesn't have a job, and is struggling for his independence.

Towgood, who is also one of the show's writers and executive producers, spoke to Brent Bambury, host of CBC Radio's Day 6, about the journey to Season 2. Here is their conversation.

When you created You're My Hero, you said that you wanted to change the way people think about what it's like to live with a disability. What are you hearing from people who watch the show? How are they responding?

The response has been really overwhelming from both the disabled community and people outside of our community. Mostly people within the disabled community are saying: "Thank you, I finally feel represented and I feel like my experience is being filmed to a broader, wider audience," because there hasn't been a lot of representation for people with disabilities. For a long time in Canada, the closest thing we got to representation was Aubrey Graham on Degrassi. So I think it was about time that changed.

OK, so does that mean that you're going to get into a big fight with Kendrick Lamar now?

Uh, well, I wouldn't want to mess with Kendrick.

You're one of the writers on the show and you created it. But what is the difference between you and Ian, the character you play? How are you different from your character?

So this is a real thing that we focused on… I wanted Ian not to have all the answers, and to be a fallible character and not necessarily be the most likable all the time. I think Ian was where I was when I was in my teenage years. So it's kind of fun as an actor to go back and revisit a period of your life that you're not necessarily in anymore. But as a teenager, I was very bitter and angry about the systematic barriers that I faced on a daily basis.

I think he's [Ian] pretty likable. He is spiky, though. He's got an edge to him. There is a scene where a character says to Ian, "I didn't know you were differently abled." What does Ian say in response to that?

He says, "For f---'s sake, it's disabled," is the direct quote.