#Degrassi writer claims Drake lawyered up after his character got a wheelchair

It’s entirely possible that a majority of Drake’s fans were introduced to him as a rapper rather than as Aubrey Graham, child actor behind the character of Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation. In the teen drama’s fourth season, Jimmy is paralyzed after a school shooting and becomes a wheelchair user, one of the show’s most iconic character arcs thanks in no small part to Drake’s subsequent superstardom.

However, in a new oral history of Degrassi published by The A.V. Club, show writer James Hurst claims that Drake hired a Toronto law firm to protest the change in his character, and even threatened to quit.

Lauren Collins, the actress who played Jimmy’s girlfriend Paige, speculated that Drake was struggling with perceived racial undertones of the storyline. “I don’t want to speak for anyone,” she said, “but I think [Aubrey] probably struggled with the idea that he was one of two Black characters on the show, and that he was the one who was winding up shot and in a wheelchair, which obviously is part of a much larger conversation.”

In the end, Drake played Jimmy despite the physical challenges that came with the revamped role. “I definitely have a few memories of him toppling the chair over and falling off of makeshift ramps that they’d constructed for him,” Collins said.