#How Hello Sunshine and Making Space Media’s Unscripted First-Look Deal Could Change Hollywood’s Disability Narratives

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Making Space Media — a disabled and women-led media company focused on producing film and TV centering the disabled voice — announced a first-look deal for unscripted content on Friday.

The deal will see the division of Candle Media and the co-founders of Making Space Media, Sophie Morgan and Keely Cat-Wells, partnering on a slew of projects, including several of which are already underway. Projects will focus on centering the lived experiences and voices of the disability community, which consists of around 1 billion people globally, according to the United Nations.

“Our mission at Hello Sunshine couldn’t be more aligned with Making Space Media — to support and showcase underrepresented talent both on and off screen,” Sara Rea, head of unscripted at Hello Sunshine, and Sarah Lazenby EVP unscripted U.K., said in a statement. “We’re delighted to be partnering with Sophie and Keely and excited to create powerful content together that we hope will create genuine legacy and impact in the world.”

For the Making Space Media co-founders, emphasis will also be placed on behind-the-scenes work, both supporting existing talent and developing new talent pipelines to see disabled people working and leading across film and TV production departments. It’s an extension of the work the duo — Morgan, an award-winning TV presenter, producer, writer and disability rights advocate, and Cat-Wells, an entrepreneur, disability rights activist and founder of C-Talent — has done with its talent acquisition and learning experience platform. Designed for the media, entertainment and advertising industries, Making Space Media fosters employment and career advancement pathways through employer-backed courses.

The deal will produce new content for Hello Sunshine alongside its existing and increasingly diversifying library of unscripted programming. That includes the previously released Surf Girls Hawai’i, a four-part docuseries about Native Hawaiian female surfers; Wynonna Judd’s documentary Wynonna: Between Hell and Hallelujah; lifestyle series Get Organized With the Home Edit; and the unscripted romantic comedy feature Meet Me in Paris. A docuseries on the all-female driver category F1 Academy; Side Hustlers, about two savvy investors who mentor three aspiring entrepreneurs; and DIY series Bricking It, are also among the company’s upcoming slate of programs.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Morgan and Cat-Wells about their new first-look deal, including why they wanted to partner with Hello Sunshine, why unscripted is a key space for disability-centric storytelling, and where — and who — they hope their content reaches.

Why does Hello Sunshine, a female-focused company, feel like the right partner for your first-look deal focused on disability narratives?

KEELY CAT-WELLS Hello Sunshine have blazed a trail when it comes to representation in general, and oftentimes disability is so siloed, we forget that it is very intersectional. So I think when two forces join together and have those aligned goals of increased and accurate and authentic representation, then positive change accelerates. This partnership with Hello Sunshine isn’t just about making great content. It’s about rewriting narratives that have been historically written by people that haven’t had that lived experience. For too long, stories of the disabled community have been told for us and not by us.

SOPHIE MORGAN So much of what Hello Sunshine embody is so aligned with our values in many ways. If you were to supplant the word disabled in front of women, the narratives that they use to describe themselves are what we and Keely have always wanted to achieve for women and disabled people in general. It felt like there could not be a greater company for us to want to be partnered with and associated with. Everything that they create, and the way they want to broaden perspectives, is exactly what we want to do.

There’s a lot of discussion about expanding disability narratives in scripted content, but you’re focusing on unscripted. Within that, we’ve seen some growth in sports, certainly narratives around health and increasing representation in the dating space. Why is unscripted an important avenue for disability stories and talent overall, and what stories are you interested in telling?

MORGAN Unscripted is my background. I make documentaries in the U.K., I’ve reported, presented or hosted for years now, and I think there’s so much power in it. Don’t get me wrong, I think in the scripted space there is also power as long as it’s told from the disabled lens, but that’s not always the case. In the unscripted space, we avoid that problem of the “cripping up,” as we call it — non-disabled people playing disabled people. In the scripted space, we don’t yet have that abundance of writers with the disability perspective to give that nuance and to give that authenticity yet in the industry — and that’s certainly one of our goals and something we definitely want to achieve with the help of Hello Sunshine. But the thing about the unscripted space is there’s a depth and a wealth of material that we haven’t really tapped into yet. I think it’s the greatest opportunity we’ve got to be able to shift perspectives on disability.

What we want to do with our production company, with our media company, is we want to make sure that we’re not just telling the stories but that we’ve got people who are making the shows that have disabilities as well; that in every part of the storytelling, there is that genuine-lived experience and an understanding of the tropes that we so often fall into when we tell stories or when disability is put onscreen. We want to debunk them or make sure we know that we’re playing into them.

The dating element is one area where there’s so much opportunity to explore. Love and relationships — what a wonderful place to look at the way that disabled people live. In the U.K., we’ve seen some fantastic examples where the show is specifically around disability and then there’s also dating shows that integrate disability, and we see this kind of portrayal of disability where it’s not just the sole purpose of the show. I think those two achieve different things and are just as important. But then you can go into the more political side of our lives. If we were to set our goals and say, “What are the things we really want to change?” They are quite political. We want to go big. But at the same time, we know we have to do a lot of showing without telling. So we want to start showing the ways in which disabled people get marginalized, ostracized — the barriers that we have to face. It’s skirting that entertainment space but without shying away from the big subjects.

CAT-WELLS With unscripted too, it’s such an awesome opportunity to provide everyone and not just those who have the privilege of having access to the entertainment industry, of being in those writers rooms and being the director. We want to see disabled people in those positions, but we know that going to take some more time. We know that also takes a certain amount of barriers to be lifted, but with unscripted I think we can very quickly, in many ways, bring so many more perspectives to the table. So many different lived experiences, so many different backgrounds. It’s such a great opportunity for us to really explore all the untold stories to, as Sophie said, get out of those tropes. Being disabled in general as disabled people is political, unfortunately, so weaving that into our narratives while creating fantastic shows is exciting and possible with unscripted.

You aren’t just focusing on women with your content deal, but people with disabilities in general. That’s a big population, and even bigger when you consider the breadth of various conditions, diagnoses and identities within the community. How do you see this deal addressing or expanding in terms of what and who we typically see in disability narratives?

CAT-WELLS It’s all around the unexpected narrative. The unexpected stories are ones that we just have not seen yet. I think for so long, we’ve seen the disabled people either play the villains, the victims or the inspirations and we are so sick and tired of that. So we can’t wait to provide those unexpected and unseen narratives.

MORGAN It’s something that I experienced a lot when I was hosting. For example, the Paralympics in the U.K. That was kind of my big break as a host and we started to notice, as we did more and more broadcasting of these games, how certain voices were always brought in as the experts or the pundits And I’m not just talking as the experts in the sport. There were certain, for example, people that could articulate well or people that could look a certain way. It was not just a whitewashing but almost like an ablewashing of the presenters and voices we were bringing in. When that became clear, we started to — given that we had the power to do so — shift that and made sure that when we had interviewees come in, they represented a range of different disabilities. I use that as an example because I think we are both so cognizant of the ways in which certain voices get the spotlight and that’s not telling the breadth of the story at all.

Disability is a huge word. Even people that don’t want to identify as disabled. You’ve got to be aware of all of that, too. There’s a lot, but I think that’s what Keely and I are so keen to be aware of as we move forward. There are groups that we know we need to represent that we don’t even have access to. We’ve had the door opened to this extraordinary room that we’re in, but we know we need to bring everyone with us. So it’s just about how we do that and that’s what we’re determined to do. This is an opportunity for us to take a community with us in a way that we’ve been dreaming of. This is a dream that we want, and it’s got to be for the wider community otherwise, what’s the point? If we were to put a hierarchy of goals and dreams, it would be that we want to see the people that don’t get seen; we want to give voice and platform to those that don’t have it.

CAT-WELLS As we know, stories shift the society that we live in. We want to make systemic change. We want to go so far beyond what we’ve seen within this industry. We know the power of it, and we’re excited to be able to harness it and do what we can with our community. And I think it’s not just about giving a microphone to our community, but it’s also just building that stage — that entire stage, for all of us. One of the things that we’re also doing that really encompasses our goals is building a talent acquisition and learning platform and helping companies build more inclusive talent pipelines. We want to get disabled women who want to bring down the barriers when it comes to education. As someone who’s chronically ill, as soon as I said, I want to be in this industry, it became hard thinking about the traditional way of breaking in because this industry constantly prioritizes stamina over talent. We have caught ourselves in this vicious cycle of just not allowing disabled people into the workforce.

MORGAN There are barriers everywhere still, and we’ve just managed to knock down one here that will hopefully open a floodgate.

You’ve mentioned behind-the-camera representation. It’s safe to say you’re addressing it because there’s little representation there in the unscripted space. But where do you want to see more hiring growth, and why does that feel like an equally important part of this first-look deal?

MORGAN Every single role that we can. I wanted to be a TV host, maybe 20 years ago when I first had my injury. I had a car crash when I was a kid, and I stumbled into television accidentally. I fell in love with it and I thought it was such a powerful tool for shifting people’s perceptions of people with disabilities. I thought I can use this to tell people about what we can do. But it’s taken me 20 years to be able to get to a point where I don’t have to fight those barriers so much in the U.K. — that people can see a space for someone like me on screen and I don’t have to justify it by explaining my backstory all the time, or only present on stuff that has to do with disability. That’s why we’re calling ourselves Making Space. We want to make space for people on screen 100 percent in every role, in every space, but we also know, as we’ve alluded, that all of these stories only work if those behind the camera — the people who are editing or filming, that is creating that show — also understand disability. Otherwise, something gets lost. We know that because we see it in other groups. It’s the male gaze with women.

I had an experience where a cameraman who had never worked with somebody who used a wheelchair before, and he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t know how to shoot it. He didn’t know how to position a wheelchair user host next to a non-disabled contributor, because he didn’t know how to make it look like one was the expert in relation to the other. He was like, “Well, if you’re lower down, you can’t be the authority.” I remember sitting there — it wasn’t me; I wasn’t the presenter. I was actually consulting — and I’m like, what is the problem here? Why can’t you shift this gaze and actually help us to redefine that you can be a wheelchair user and be the expert in this situation? So this is where it gets really exciting for me and Keely. We really don’t want to just put disabled people in front of the camera. Everywhere we can sprinkle disability talent in, we will want to and that’s what the pipeline is all about. The talent is out there. That’s another massive misconception — that the talent is lacking, that there isn’t this big pipeline, that disabled people can’t do this work or don’t work, but we know that’s not true. So we really want to shift that narrative.

Streaming has made headway for inclusive narratives in a way linear hasn’t, but as you noted, events like the Paralympics which land on broadcast can reach a wide audience. We often also see more disability-focused — and not just inclusive — content in the shorter format space. With this deal, what are the content types you’re hoping to tell stories in?

CAT-WELLS When we’re talking and thinking around accessibility and disability representation, we said we deserve to be on every platform, and it has to be on every platform. We want to see it everywhere. So I hate to not answer this in a very specific technical way, but our goal really is to make some real change and get disabled people on the biggest, most important platforms. When I first became disabled, the only place I could see myself and learn about my community was on social media. I don’t want that to be the case anymore. I want to be able to turn on TV, go onto a streaming platform — whatever it may be — and feel seen and heard and proud of my community.

MORGAN I would echo that. I have to say my personal ambition, as much as I 100 percent want to be everywhere, is to really mainstream disability. I don’t want it to be seen as niche. We are a huge percentage of the planet. I really want to dismantle the idea that we exist in this sort of parallel universe, but that actually, we sit across every community. So we should be everywhere. So we’ve got to mainstream, and then we can work it out from there. When we witnessed the Paralympics being mainstreamed by Channel 4 [in the U.K.], it was so pivotal for so many reasons, but one of the main things was this shift in the way that we saw disability and it was tangible on the streets. So to me, mainstreaming is really important. Then when we get the power, we can demonstrate that we have an audience.

Because at the moment, people think that disabled stories are for disabled people. We have to tell them from the non-disabled lens so that people will get into it. And I’m like no, you don’t understand. There’s an audience. We need to start proving that. So for me, we need to get into where are the figures? How can we prove this powerful number that we know it exists? We feel it, we know it, we live it, we’re in it. But we’re still having to argue all the time to streamers, to networks — to whoever — that there’s an audience for our stories. That for me is a success, is when we can start to say that we can tell these stories, and you’re not going to lose an audience, you’re going to gain an audience. You don’t have to play into these silly tropes. You don’t have to pander down to anyone. You don’t have to explain away our stories. You don’t have to fall on those ablest ideas. Then we gain a new power. It’s just harnessing the power of these massive networks and streamers and positioning us in a way that isn’t sidelined.

Interview edited for length and clarity.