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It’s been a BIG year for disability activist, writer and actress Hannah Diviney.
She won the Marie Claire ‘Women Of The Year: The Voice Of New’ award, went viral for calling out Lizzo and Beyonce for their ableist lyrics, AND she petitioned for Disney to FINALLY create a disabled princess.
As Hannah describes it, 2022 was “one of the most surreal, busy, chaotic, complicated years of her life.”
However, in addition to all this, Hannah is also set to make history this year.
Thanks to the upcoming SBS series, ‘Latecomers,’ Hannah will be the first disabled woman to ever be featured in a sex scene on Australian television.
The six part mini series follows two characters with cerebral palsy and their carers as they all navigate the world of sex and dating.
The show was created by Angus Thompson and Emma Myers, both of which have cerebral palsy.
“I read the script and I laughed, cried and my jaw was on the floor,” Hannah told Kaleidoscope News, “I couldn’t believe that SBS was making something like this and that they had taken a chance on it.”
Like many film and television sets nowadays, the team behind ‘Latecomers’ made sure to have an intimacy coordinator on set during filming.
Hannah says the coordinator “basically choreographed every aspect of the [sex] scene.”
“It should be industry standard if you’re having intimate scenes where actors have to be physically vulnerable that there is an intimacy coordinator on set,” she says.
Being in such a historic sex scene, Hannah says it was vital they didn’t just “insinuate what was going on.”
“There are certain elements of my body that I made sure the camera focused on because if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it right,” she told Kaleidoscope News.
She says the filming the scene was such “a powerful experience."
“I think every single person on that set knew the gravity of what we were making,” says Hannah, “because as soon we finished we all burst into tears.”
With the Australian mainstream media still lacking in diversity, seeing Hannah on our screens is going to be life-changing for so many people across Australia.
Hopefully this is just the beginning for better representation on our Aussie screens.
Latecomers will be out this 'International Day of People With Disabilities' on Saturday December 3rd 2022.
It will be available on SBS Viceland and SBS OnDemand.
Cover Image: Women's Weekly
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