One of the main characters on HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones, is paralyzed. Another has lost his right hand. We’ve met an important character with a severe skin disorder and another with an intellectual disability.
And Peter Dinklage, the actor who comes first in the credits, is a little person.
So is Rebecca Cokley, executive director of the National Council on Disability. She’s a fan of the show — in part because it’s given average-sized viewers a new set of references for people who look like her.Dinklage’s character, Tyrion Lannister, is complicated, powerful and very sexy.
Cokley loved the original Game of Thrones books by author George R. R. Martin. But she did worry that it would be harder to witness certain scenes on the screen than on the page. In one episode, for example, an evil king humiliates Tyrion by staging a vulgar play with a cast made up exclusively of little people.
“When I read that in the book, I had never seen my own experience in life reflected so accurately, so vividly, so viscerally,” Cokley remembers.
Right after the episode including that scene aired, some of Cokely’s friends who don’t have disabilities called her — to make sure she was OK.
“They were like: ‘Wow, is that really what it’s like?‘And I was like, ‘Yeah,’ ” she recalls. “There are days when that’s what it’s like. People see me and get down on their knees and mock how I walk. Or they follow me around the…
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