A Chat with: Writer and Director Ashley Eakin
Ashley Eakin originally studied Journalism at University with a dream of writing for magazines. Her career trajectory has taken many turns since her undergraduate days, from scriptwriting, working in reality TV to assisting prominent feature-length directors. Along the way, she has become more confident in talking about her experience with Olliers Maffucci Syndrome and is using her platform as a director to highlight disabled characters’ stories through her films.
[ID: Ashley has fair, white skin and long blonde hair that flows past her shoulders, which is tucked behind one of her ears. She has blue eyes and is looking into the camera smiling, wearing red lipstick. She is stood against a dark grey background, wearing a sheer black top with pleated sleeves and holding her hands in front of her waist.]
ARE YOU A WRITER OR A DIRECTOR FIRST?
Ashley is a writer/director and a director/writer - she’s both - and there’s nothing to say that she can’t do both equally! Ashley originally went to school for Journalism to pursue writing, but always had this little voice with a passion to direct, but it was a long journey [almost 10 years] to really own and pursue directing.
“I was scared. I’m a person with a disability. I’m a woman. I did not see myself represented as a director anywhere, which made it hard to imagine myself in the role. I doubted myself without even trying and questioned ‘Would people listen to me on set?’ ‘Would I be able to hold my own?’ - all that type of stuff really held me back.
But when I would think back to my childhood, I was always the person who would say ‘let’s create a movie,’ and I would make people do things. I was always doing that and I loved movies, but I think I really pushed writing for so long because it is so behind the scenes, as a disabled person who looks different than “glamorous Hollywood” I was like ‘I could do that - no one’s going to notice me.’ Where with directing, you are front and centre, so I think that’s why it took me a long time to own the director part.
The truth is – for me, I am a very visual social person and I discovered that writing scripts was actually really hard and lonely, so then I thought maybe I can abandon writing and I’ll just direct.”
But she tells me it was only when she came back to writing the scripts for her own directing projects [that included her perspective as a disabled person] that things started to take off. It really struck a chord with me when she was talking about how she took inspiration from her perspective as a disabled person and used that in her writing: “That perspective is so nuanced, and not many people can write it authentically, unless they’ve lived in a disabled body.”
She also tells me that she works very closely with her husband - we both agreed on the importance of having a sounding board - someone who’s not afraid to tell you an idea or project might not be as good as it could or should be. “It’s not personal!”
NOW THAT YOU’RE MORE ESTABLISHED AS A DIRECTOR, DO YOU THINK THAT THE WAY YOU HANDLE YOURSELF ON SET HAS CHANGED?
“Yes. One of the best things about directing is that you’re so in it, you don’t really realise that everyone is watching you. Also, because most of the stories I am pursuing now are about disability, most of that insecurity that I had as a kid of not wanting people to stare at me, or not wanting to be noticed, and trying to hide or minimise my disability… if people notice something different, it’s actually part of the overall story/theme that we’re working on. It’s actually very important for the [sometimes very seasoned] crew to see someone like ME directing. It opens the door for the next disabled director to be taken seriously.”
[ID: A photo of Ashley taken on a film camera. She is stood in front of a fountain, whilst holding her camera which is hanging around around her neck. She is looking off camera, wearing a dark green jacket and a white t-shirt.]
“One of the most profound things I’ve learned is; if I own it, everything gets a lot easier.”
This really struck a chord with my own experience with my disability, as this confidence is something that only comes with age. I tell her that it’s only been over the past few years that I have learnt to be more confident in myself. The hardest part is opening up, and you can have conversations with people about your disability, even if they don’t necessarily have the same experience as you. Something that Ryan O’Connell and myself discussed on the first episode of the podcast was; once you put it out there, you would be surprised about how many people don’t care.
And then, as Ashley adds: “Who cares if they do care!” If someone does care that much and does have a negative perception of you just because of your disability and nothing else, then they have their own work to do.
“I’ve come to realise that everyone has something that they’re insecure about, or that they fear, or that they don’t want to be shown,” Ashley says, “mine’s just visible.”
Amen to that!
SO HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTO FILMMAKING?
Ashley studied Journalism at San Diego State University. “I originally wanted to write for magazines. And when I started school in 2005, one of my first classes a teacher told everyone; ‘just so everyone knows, print is dying.’ Little did they know it was all just going to be digital and it wasn’t this catastrophic event.”
Ashley then embarked on classes which focused on news reporting, and lots of other different types of journalism, learning along the way what went into making a good story. She tells me that by the time she was graduating, her focus had shifted, and she had decided to pursue a film minor.
Ashley explains to me that almost at the end of her university career, there was a real turning point when she attended the talk of a guest speaker who had a paralysed arm: “He was a film distributor. I didn’t know of anyone in the film industry who was disabled and seeing him talk about his career was almost like this ‘Aha! Moment’ where I could see myself in Hollywood. Likely many people who grow up in the Midwest [and before social media] I always thought of everyone who works in Hollywood as being so glamorous, [and that] they wouldn’t accept anyone who was different. Little did I know that a majority of people who work behind the scenes are pretty down-to-earth and not a supermodel.”
This single moment really gave her the motivation to believe in what she wanted to do, and to follow her ambition of going to grad school and getting a Master’s Degree in screenwriting. It was only when she started speaking to others in the industry, whilst filling out applications, that she was told that it would only be worthwhile to do a Master’s in screenwriting if she had the money to and didn’t have to take out a giant loan - otherwise it would be better to just teach herself and jump right into working.
“For me, that was really wise advice because in the film industry, it takes so long to make REAL money and a successful career is not guaranteed unlike going to school for a lawyer or doctor. So when I first graduated with my bachelor’s degree in Journalism, I jumped right into the industry as an intern on a movie set. My first film starred Ja Rule, it was a pretty wild experience, but I instantly knew this was the career for me. Then I worked as a production assistant on a variety of projects. My first real ‘job’ in the industry was as the assistant to the creator of America’s Next Top Model. I worked on that for three seasons of the show. It was a really cool process, but I quickly realised that I didn’t want to work in reality TV, I wanted to work on scripted narrative projects.”
Ashley then took the risky decision to jump ship, turning down the prospect of a promotion to associate producer with Top Model, so she could take a job as a Writer’s office assistant for a scripted NBC show. “When I look back on all these different jobs. I would assist these executives/creatives, and then realise that I actually wanted to go in a different direction. Figuring out what you don’t want to do is just as important.”
I asked her if she was always confident in her decisions to take a sideways step to something else:
“It was always very scary. You don’t know if you’re making the right decision, and money is always an issue - as an assistant in Hollywood, you’re not making a lot of money. You basically have to start over when you move to a new area.”
Obviously, with working in the creative industries comes a lot of uncertainty. Ashley tells me that she felt taking this job on a scripted production was absolutely the right decision, but then it got to the end of the job, and they just had to wait for the show to air to see if it got picked up by the network for another season - you could be waiting for six months to a year to see if a show will get green-lit for another run.
Ashley then moved on to a job assisting an executive in development, reading through a lot of other writer’s scripts was key to building her taste, but it also made her start to doubt her own writing skills.
“I would reach these scripts and think wow – they love to do this. But the process of writing has always been torturous. The feeling that I wanted to direct kept creeping in” and that is where she decided she needed to make her own short. With very little money [$700] and a lot of favours, she proceeded to make her first film EXO and it ended up being shown at a film festival. She describes it as a mini physiological thriller, almost homage to Fight Club.
“A film director who I had previously been a PA for, Mark Pellington saw my short and took me into his office and said I should definitely pursue being a director - and that’s all you need sometimes - just one person to say ‘go do it’.”
ASHLEY’S FIRST SHORT FILM
[id:Ashley is on location surrounded by crew members in the background. She is wearing a black cap and a white shirt, holding a water bottle. She is leaning down to look into a monitor.]
Ashley’s first short EXO didn’t focus on disability specifically as a theme, however, but it did explore themes of perception versus reality. She says she links this strongly with her experience as a disabled woman - especially with her condition, people cannot always tell that she has a disability, whether it be because she is sitting a certain way, or if she is on a zoom call, for example. She says this is a theme that flows throughout all of her work.
“At this point in my life I was still very much ignoring my disability - I was not showing pictures showing my disability and I would not call myself disabled… I wouldn’t talk to people about it. I almost separated myself from my disability.”
WORKING FOR DIRECTOR JON M. CHU ON CRAZY RICH ASIANS
After making her first short and loving the process, she realised she needed to work for a director who is active in the industry to learn more about the skills you need to have success. Ashley tells me she interviewed for five months before finding the coveted role of assistant to the director Jon M. Chu. The project he was working on at that time was the box office smash Crazy Rich Asians.
It was three weeks after her first interview with the director, and she still hadn’t heard anything back - “In assistant-hiring world, that normally means someone else got the job,” she laughs, “but then on a Friday an assistant calls me and tells me to read this book Crazy Rich Asians over the weekend and come in to discuss how I would make it into the film.” Somehow, juggling reshoots of her film as well as other things that she needed to do, she speed-read the book (including listening to the audiobook while doing the supermarket run).
“I went into the interview with all of these notes and ideas of how I would do it. It was a really great meeting and there was a lot of good synergy. A few days later, I ended up getting the job. It was the most exciting and wild two-and-a-half-years of my life.” Ashley goes on to explain that Chu was the kind of director who would take his assistant to all of his meetings, and this was invaluable in terms of the exposure she got in meeting people, and learning what it took to direct a feature film because there are so many different elements that have to be considered during that process. “That was the best film school. It laid a lot of groundwork for the skills that I use in my career now. It also helped me feel comfortable in a variety of spaces; even little things like how I am [now] not nervous when I go to a studio lot for a meeting – and that’s directly because I have been to all of them with Jon. I feel like getting over your nerves is half the battle in this industry.”
She goes on to tell me that it was the most amazing time for her both professionally and personally while working on this film. “To work on the production and spend five months in Malaysia and Singapore for filming, and then to see the sheer volume of the good reaction it got from press and audiences alike, while simultaneously becoming more confident in coming to terms with my own identity, was life-changing.”
ASHLEY COMING TO TERMS WITH HER OWN IDENTITY
“When I was working on Crazy Rich Asians, I came across this Facebook group which was specifically for people with my condition - Olliers and Maffucci Syndrome. It was kind of this awakening where I could see other people like me, who had hands like I do or similar surgeries [to what I’d had],” whereas before she’d always felt the need to crop her photos so other people couldn’t see that.
“It was that moment when I realised; if I was 7 years old and could see a woman like me in her thirties, travelling around the world and working on a high-level film, that would change my life… but if the woman was hiding it, it would make me feel sad and make me want to hide it too.”
[ID: A picture of Ashley as a child doing physical therapy following a medical procedure. She has several pins in one leg and one of her shoes has a taller sole. She is walking, using bars on either side of her for support.]
She explains that it was this thought that really inspired her to start the journey of coming to terms with her condition, but struggled to find a way to become confident with it. Especially because she has spent her whole life up until this point trying to hide it. It was almost like a habit that she needed to kick that was part of her nature.
Ashley then linked this back to her work with Chu on Crazy Rich Asians, and the huge positive effect it had for the modern representation of Asian-Americans on the big screen, which resisted the typical stereotypes of the hyper-sexualised Asian woman, or the omnipresent nerdy Asian character. Now though, there was this breadth of representation that a lot of people could relate to.
“That’s when I looked to my own community. If I can embrace this part of myself, then I can create a more inclusive world on screen through my work for people with disabilities.”
before this, because Ashley felt so disconnected from her disability and her body, as well as being white woman, she felt that she wasn’t really part of the diversity and inclusion discussion - it was only when she began to become more accepting and confident that she found that, the disabled community is in fact the least represented group on screen, and more needs to be done to humanise disabled people’s experience so that society’s perceptions of disabled people evolves.
ASHLEY’S EXPERIENCE WITH OLLIERS AND MAFFUCCI SYNDROME
Ashley tells me that Olliers and Maffucci Syndrome affects the way that her bones grow - she has had more than twenty (mostly) corrective surgeries to help ensure that her bones don’t grow in directions that could cause further problems for her health. She tells me that she has had two leg lengthenings on one leg, because one grows slower than the other one - this also means that she has hip problems which results in a lack of mobility. This means that she walks with a limp because her legs aren’t exactly the same length, and the difference in growth in her bones also means that her legs are also shaped slightly differently.
“I have issues doing stuff, but I never used to never tell anyone…I would just adapt to make it work, but I also recognise that is a privilege with my specific disability. We definitely need to make sets more accessible. I am realising the great thing about being on set is it’s this collaborative community and there are so many people around who want to be helpful, so now if I did need help with something, I just ask… or I will tell someone I can’t do something. I am much more vocal about that now.”
When interviewing for jobs, Ashley tells me she has had to have conversations with prospective employers that she does have a disability and that there will be some things that she will not be able to do, but she does everything she can to be adaptable and do what needs to be done.
Because she has surgeries regularly, she was also scared going into the industry that people wouldn’t accept that she may need time off for medical reasons. Thankfully though, all of her employers so far have been very accommodating.
Ashley does say though, that there is a very prominent issue of employers who can be accommodating, but choose not to be. We talk about how the COVID pandemic has proven to everyone that accommodations such as working from home full-time are feasible and possible, and they do not affect productivity as previously thought - but it is these things that the disabled community have been campaigning for for years, but have been met with a brick wall.
ON TRAVELLING FOR WORK AND DIFFERING PERCEPTIONS OF DISABILITY AROUND THE WORLD…
When working in tropical climates Ashley tells me her biggest thing was “What are people going to think when they see my body [and my bone disease] when I’m wearing bathing suits or shorts?”
Honestly, I am the same. With my CP, my legs are thinner than most people’s which means it really has an effect on my confidence and I hate wearing shorts. Ashley tells me though, that when she was working in Malaysia and Singapore, initially she was worried about feeling uncomfortable about showing more of her body, but ultimately those insecurities fell away. The people on set become your family and I never felt any judgment or shame. The Malaysian and Singapore community embraced me.
She then tells me that she travelled to Latvia for three months to work on a TV show as a director’s assistant, and this is where she has experienced the biggest culture shock as far as being disabled is concerned.
Previously, when she has travelled for work, she tells me that she “stood out no matter what, because she was a white person amongst people of colour.” When she went to Latvia though, she had the same skin colour as most other people.
“I told my husband people were aggressively staring at me everywhere I went, almost to the point of analysing me, and even more shocking, they didn’t care that I was staring back at them. I’m used to people staring at me in general when I go out in public, but this was another level. It was so intense for me. We even have it on video from when my husband came to visit. He’s a filmmaker so we were just shooting a fun travel video on the weekend and I’m walking around wearing a very long coat. You can hardly see my body, and there’s a kid that gasps and runs to his Mom. It was then that we started to kind of unpack the history of Latvia and the Soviet Union and what went on with Eugenics.”
We then talked about how even though we live in countries that we perceive to be liberal and forward-thinking (Ashley lives in LA, but also spends time in Canada) that disabled people are still seen as an “other” - so this feeling is only multiplied for disabled people who may live in other parts of the world.
ASHLEY’S SHORT SINGLE AND DEALING INTERNALISED ABLEISM
CLICK HERE TO SEE ASHLEY'S SHORT FILM 'SINGLE' IN FULL
“I FELT BAD FOR A REALLY LONG TIME ABOUT MY FEELINGS OF INTERNALISED ABLEISM […] BUT THEN I SAW THAT I FELT THIS WAY BECAUSE OF THE WAY OUR CULTURE SEES DISABILITY.”
really related to what Ashley was trying to show through this film; a character who is just the average disabled person who is just trying to get through life like everyone else. The film follows a female protagonist with a limb difference who doesn’t identify with the disabled community, and gets set-up on a blind date with a guy with a limb difference - she struggles with internalised ableism and knows that it is wrong.
I asked Ashley what advice she would give to other people who are going through a hard time with internalised ableism, as we all know that while it can fade out, it always flares up when you least expect it.
She says: “Give yourself some grace, and try to find yourself some community – there are people going through some of the same things as you, and knowing that helps.”
[ID: A behind the scenes shot taken during filming of Ashley’s short film Single. Taken from a high vantage point, cast and crew are on a flat, high rise rooftop in what looks like LA, surrounded by windows of neighbouring buildings that overlook the room. On the roof are many chairs, props and a blanket that is laid on the floor.]
ONE THING PEOPLE CAN DO *TODAY* TO MAKE THE WORLD LESS ABLEIST
Ashley says “stop treating anything to do with disability as something that is an act of charity. If disability-related issues are viewed as a right, and representation is taken seriously, things will change.”
WHAT’S UP NEXT FOR ASHLEY
> Ashley has just shot a short exploring the Nazi mass murder of disabled people in the 1930s.
> Ashley is developing a TV show.
> Ashley is part of the Powderkeg Fuse Incubator, curated by Paul Feig (Director of Bridesmaids), and is working on a coming of age short film set in the 90’s, which has a disabled lead.