The lights dimmed on stage and the audience went wild. The energy vibrated through the theatre as co-star of the award-winning TV show Breaking Bad took centre stage.
“Hi, I’m RJ Mitte and if you don’t know who I am, then yeah I have no idea why you’re here,” he said to a laughing audience.
He’s one of the few actors on TV with a disability and, like the character he plays on Breaking Bad, Mitte has cerebral palsy. He was diagnosed when he was three years old.
When asked about how people with physical disabilites are being portrayed in entertainment media, Mitte said, “When you’re talking about a demographic on television, that’s not a very big demographic. At the time, there was only two per cent of people with an actual disability on television and film. And it’s growing—we’re having amazing shows like Breaking Bad and Switched at Birth and other shows that are incorporating disability.”
