Actors With Disabilities In Big Roles? 'We Don't Have A Chance'
If you watched Ironside this week on NBC, you probably noticed the differences between the new detective show and the original that preceded it. The first show ran from 1967-1975 and starred Raymond Burr, best known for his starring role as lawyer Perry Mason in the 50s and 60s. The current show — producers prefer to call it a remix rather than a reboot — stars Blair Underwood, who is Burr's opposite in almost every way. Burr's chief detective, Robert T. Ironside, who was injured while on duty, was careful, deliberate and stoic about being a paraplegic.
Underwood's Ironside is volatile, spontaneous and mad as hell that a bullet also has landed him in a wheelchair.
The original Ironside was set in San Francisco, and the city was as much a character in the show as the detective was. The remix moves the action to New York, which so far, seems incidental. Burr (who died in 1993) is white; Underwood is black.
The things that remain the same in both series are the wheelchair Ironside uses and the fact that both actors chosen to portray him are/were fully ambulatory. And that angers a number of actors who use their wheelchairs on and off screen. They say no offense to Underwood, but the time for having actors without disabilities play actors who have them is past.