Showrunner Robia Rashid’s ‘Atypical’ Brings Autism in for a Close-Up

“I’m a weirdo,” teenager Sam (Keir Gilchrist) says in the opening voiceover of Atypical, which premieres today on Netflix. “That’s what everyone says.” He has a high-functioning form of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). He’s fidgety. He’s obsessed with Antarctica. He doesn’t get sarcasm. He’d like to have a girlfriend. “Sometimes I don’t know what people mean when they say things, and that can make me feel alone even when there are other people in the room.”

As the scene opens up, you see that it’s not actually a voiceover at all but a counseling session. “I’d like to go to Antarctica,” Sam tells the counselor. “It’s quiet there — except in the rookeries where the penguins breed.” His face lights up in delight. “Those aren’t quiet. No, sir.” He looks up and pauses. “I’m finished with my answer.”

It’s a sharp, tight scene — barely 30 seconds long — that puts you right into Sam’s life and his mind. The half-hour series is eight episodes long, and it flies by in a blink. There’s a fine point where economy meets breathability, and Atypical is right on it. Creator/showrunner Robia Rashid, a former writer and producer on The Goldbergs and How I Met Your Mother, begins the series with Sam in a protective but permeable shell, and he gradually pokes his way out of it like a baby penguin in a nature documentary.

Rashid sat down with Decider to talk about the origins of the series and what she hopes viewers will take away from it about autism.

DECIDER: Tell me about the idea behind the show. Why did you want to write about a family with an autistic teenager?

ROBIA RASHID: My first TV job was on the final season of Will & Grace and I wrote on network comedies for years, which was fun but never felt 100 percent like my voice. More and more people are getting diagnosed with autism, so there’s this generation of young people growing up knowing that they’re on the spectrum. They want the same things that any other young person does — independence and love and acceptance — and it seemed like a tell a story from a different point of view. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it from Sam’s point of view, which is hard. It’s a tricky thing to do right, and I really wanted to do it right. I have someone in my life that I’m close to who is on the spectrum, so I didn’t take it lightly.

Does that person have a lot in common with Sam?

No. He’s much younger. I don’t talk about that very much because he’s a kid and I want to protect his privacy, but the similarities between them are fairly minimal.

One thing about approaching this as a comedy is that Sam doesn’t get sarcasm, which is inherently funny but can tend to put him in the joke. How did the writers’ room approach that?

I’m very sensitive to that. It bothers me when I watch shows and feel like the writers are poking fun of certain characters. I feel like the comedy on this show comes out of character in a way that makes you feel like the characters are in on the joke and doesn’t make fun of same. Part of that is being as true to his character as possible, and part of that is the instinct to protect a vulnerable character. We pushed ourselves to let him be a normal teenager. He wants to have sex, and we didn’t want to desexualize him. Authenticity really does breed comedy, and my favorite kind of comedy comes out of real life.

Sam is obsessed with Antarctica, which is a big part of the series. Why is that in the show?

A lot of times, people on the autism spectrum have what’s called a perseverate interest, which is something they focus a lot of their attention on. I knew that I wanted something like that for Sam that we could use as something that could tie the characters together, and there’s something amazing to me about Antarctica. When I first thought about that as his interest, I did a ton of research on it. It’s a barren, lonely place, but it’s also beautiful and conjures the feelings that everyone on the show has. For Sam, there’s something peaceful and safe about Antarctica.

This is an eight-episode, half-hour series, and the shorter orders seem to make a lot more sense creatively than making everything 13 episodes. How did you approach that when you were developing the series?

I loved doing it as eight episodes because I could think of it as one continuous thing. Everything is very serialized and feels like one piece.

Did you write a pilot?

I wrote a pilot and showed it to Sony where I’m under an overall deal, and they loved it and were very supporting. We sent it out to cable and streaming, and Netflix liked it and picked it up. We got Jennifer Jason Leigh and Keir Gilchrist on board, and then it was a go.

Tell me about Keir Gilchrist’s audition.

The audition process was quite long and quite rigorous for Sam. We auditioned people on the spectrum and neurotypical actors, and Keir Gilchrist read the script early on and sought me out. We sat down for coffee for two hours, and he talked about how much he related to the character. It was a long process — I think he came in four times — and he does an amazing, committed job with the character.

I could see going with an experienced actor like Gilchrist who would bring a lot of research and acting chops to the role, or I could see casting someone on the autism spectrum who was more raw. Were those the two groups you saw?

I didn’t think of it as two camps as much as what was going to be the best fit. It helped that Gilchrist was an experienced actor and could take on an intense role, but it wasn’t a choice of experience as much as him just nailing every single audition.

You made the comment about the writers’ room having a sense of protecting Sam, but people are mean and there are people on the show who are mean.

Exactly. We show a range of reactions to Sam. There are people who are flat out mean to him, and there are people like his friend Zahid (Nic Dodani) who are more like, “You’re a weirdo, but so is everybody.” We’re trying to open up conversation about how people relate to special needs.

The show is built around Sam and his family, ABC’s Speechless has taken a similar approach. Did you find that show helpful, or had you already written most of Atypical by the time you saw Speechless?

We had written the show already with a focus on Sam within his family. Having his point of view and his voiceover as a guide has been super helpful for me in framing the show. Focusing on his voiceover and his journal is a way to peek into the head of somebody who doesn’t always communicate the way he wants to and can’t always say what’s on his mind.

Having the sister and the parents in their own scenes makes it more like a family and less like a show about a kid with autism.

I agree. The show should ideally have some universal appeal and not just be a show for people who have experienced ASD. Hopefully, it’s a show for anyone who can relate to not feeling normal, to being connected and disconnected from their family at the same time. We wanted to make the series focus on the effect that Sam has on his family and what they’re all going through in their own lives. Sam’s relationship with his sister [Brigette Lundy-Paine] is one of my favorite on the show.

Mark Duplass talked in an interview earlier this week about the creative possibilities of working with a smaller budget and the freedom you can carve out with a smaller budget. What was your experience on Atypical vs. How I Met Your Mother, which was a much more complicated show to shoot?

How I Met Your Mother was very fast and was a wonderful experience. On Atypical, we tried to make the show feel like a big world — scenes on the bus, scenes at school, scenes at home, scenes where Sam works — and there is something exciting about working with a smaller budget. You have to get your hands dirty and come up with creative solutions.

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.

Stream Atypical on Netflix