Ben Lewin: I guess I’m always looking for a story about an unusual person on a journey. I mean, that’s sort of what every bit of drama is about, in essence. It struck a few chords. I did have at least one close friend with a daughter, that I said, “Oh, that could be her.” And when I talked to her I said well, there’s this whole Star Trek thing and she said, “Yes, of course.” I mean, it’s like the autism community recognizes that connection between Star Trek or science fiction and having autism. And I thought, I mean that’s fascinating, just that world of simple morality, the sense that everyone else is an alien, and that whole thing had never occurred to me. Mr. Spock as the original autistic hero, if you like.

To embody that in a young woman, I thought was particularly unusual, since autism is usually represented … I mean, your typical example is Rain Man and if you look at what’s on TV about autism, it’s usually represented in young men or men. And I thought, well this is a different take.

Does living with a disability yourself help you, in a way, filter out the scripts that don’t have some truth about that experience in them?

You’re asking me whether my personal experience as a disabled person informs my work. Well, of course it does. I mean, you can’t help it, although I’ve tried to resist that. Initially, when I started as a storyteller, I said no, no, don’t tell stories about yourself, tell stories about other people. Get out of your own space. Look at what other people do. But more and more of the time, I’ve been drawn to the idea of telling stories where you’ve got something inside you that also contributes to it. But there’s a lexicon of new language, of euphemisms, which I find very difficult to navigate.

I went to a school called The Urala Hospital School for Crippled Children. Heaven forbid you should use that language today. But you know, one way or another, I kind of get it. And I think that my special take on things is to avoid sentimentality, to avoid the kind of rah-rah aspect of it and try to have a kind of little window into real life, rather than tell a story of triumph. I like to stick to those stories which somehow keep it real, but at the same time, stir your emotions.