Reclaiming My Red Carpet Essay
In June 2022, I wrote a Business Insider essay about covering the Tony Awards red carpet that year. In the essay, I described how red carpets are inherently inaccessible for many wheelchair users and people with other disabilities. I explained that this unfortunate fact is no one’s fault, but is proof that the entertainment industry has many systems in place that exclude the disability community rather than include it. I felt inhuman, useless, and sometimes patronized while trying to do my job.
Everything in that essay was true to the best of my knowledge until the end of the editing process. On a comp day when I was supposed to be off (amid heated discussions with editors about why I should be allowed to use identity-first language in an essay I wrote about my personal experience), I also learned that a superior I trusted to relay my requested accommodations to the PR representatives in charge of the event had failed to do so.
After processing that my superior’s mistake had put me in danger, whether purposeful or not, I wondered aloud if the essay should be taken down. The new knowledge completely changed my perspective of my own experience.
The piece garnered social media attention for me and Business Insider. For example, I was awed to discover that renowned feminist, author, and advocate Roxane Gay had liked the post on Twitter (she has since cleared her likes). Many people at the company convinced me that my essay didn’t wrongfully disparage anyone, so I said it could remain live.
I understand that it’s a privilege to say this, but that night in 2022 when combined with the editing process and one editor’s response to the aftermath of my whole experience became one of the most traumatic experiences of my adult life.
I want to tell the truth in The Rolling Byline. So, more than two years after I learned the full truth about what happened, in honor of Disability Employment Awareness Month — here it is.
The Untold Story
Jesse Williams hugged me on June 12th, 2022 and it saved me.
I don’t mean that as a hyperbole. He recognized me from a few weeks before the Tonys. A kind usher helped me introduce myself after I went to a performance of Take Me Out (he was making his Broadway debut). I’d interviewed him months before in an hour-long Zoom session, during which he and his Grey’s Anatomy co-star Sarah Drew talked about their work together as fan-favorite couple April Kepner and Jackson Avery.
He was genuinely happy to see me in the moment, which a colleague captured on film. He leaned down, hugged me, and let me do my job. What neither of us knew was that I was in the middle of an anxiety attack at the time. Or I was at least functioning while having extreme anxiety.
He made me feel like a human being and reminded me of my purpose on a night I wanted to disappear, curl up into a ball in bed and never show my face in public again.
I wouldn’t consider this feeling to be suicidal but it is real and serious. Vanishing into thin air was preferable to covering the Tonys for most of that night. It felt like a good alternative to shame, anger, and embarrassment.
I didn’t share anything about this moment in the original essay, because I didn’t want it to be turned into inspiration porn if picked up by other outlets. I could just see it. “Jesse Williams hugs wheelchair user in sweet moment on Tony’s red carpet” or some such bullshit. I may have felt non-existent that night, but going from that to feeling like an object of pity wouldn’t have been an upgrade.
While it had been fulfilling to see some patronizing reporter from another outlet watch on in awe as we greeted each other, all Jesse did in the span of the next few minutes was stand there, intentionally hold space for me, and treat me like a professional.
What was extraordinary about that moment was that all of Jesse’s choices, which appeared to be unconscious, proved that he understood equity in a space where everyone else didn’t
For three minutes someone’s actions told me, “I see you. You’re okay. Do your job.”
The Truth About Newsrooms
I’m not revisiting this experience to tell the world that Jesse Williams hugged me once. I’m doing so to share the most extreme personal example I’ve experienced of a hard truth.
Corporate America — namely newsrooms — is ill-equipped to handle disability inclusion; whether within content or when someone dares to show up disabled.
On a phone call before this event, the woman who’d failed to communicate my accommodations told me that I was overreacting and overthinking everything.
Considering that my worst fears were made a reality that night, it’s fair to say she was wrong.
After the Tony’s, the same person called me into a one-on-one “meeting” in which she chastised me for sending an email that included her and her bosses. I asked the company to have meetings about my experience so something similar didn’t happen to someone else in the future.
To Business Insider’s credit, those meetings happened and my experience as a wheelchair-using reporter there improved.
Coincidentally, that same editor went on maternity leave the day after she told me that my actions contradicted the way she preferred to run her newsroom.
For the sake of my mental health, I stopped attempting to have a meeting with her and a third party to explain my experience during what I felt was a vaguely threatening conversation. They kept conveniently getting rescheduled. But many people tried to excuse her actions.
I’ll never get the apology I deserve from her. At this point, it would be meaningless. She showed me who she is and I believe her.
I’m writing this to give myself closure because it’s the whole truth. It probably won’t go viral. But it was important for me to write. Change doesn’t happen when disrespected people stay quiet.
It happens because people repeatedly revisit their traumas to make the future better for others. Make no mistake: workplace trauma is real and mine didn’t end on that red carpet.
Hollywood and entertainment journalism aren’t the only places where it’s difficult for disabled people to work. We face obstacles in every industry. But most of those roadblocks have everything to do with the corporate world’s refusal to listen to marginalized communities or to think beyond profit and nothing to do with our disabilities or accommodation needs.
I refuse to accept that I’m the problem.
I’ll keep doing my work and one day I’ll reclaim the actual red carpet.
Welcome to The Rolling Byline by Esme Mazzeo.