Rachel Abrams

All of that makes sense when you remind yourself that this is, at the end of the day, a commercial venture, right?

It has to have an audience.

It has to get, you know, a distributor.

It has to have somebody pay for it.

It's inherently casting that flattens the human experience.

You're only casting for a certain type of person.

Kian clearly wants this to be an uplifting show, right?

He wants the stories to make you feel good.

And so that premise is going to lead you to a certain type of people that does not necessarily make the universe of people as three-dimensional as we know that human beings are.

We'll be right back.

And I think the elephant in the room here is that there are a lot of unkind people in the world, right?

Like there are a lot of people who would or maybe even do watch the show and laugh at these folks on Love on the Spectrum.

And you wrote about the show for The Times magazine.

And one of the things you talked about was how Kian referred to one cast member as being a, quote, comic genius without even realizing it.

and laughing at somebody.

You know, Anna, something that I just keep thinking of as we're talking is this idea of representation.

Like that thing that Kaylin said about who would Tanner be if he wasn't on this show?

Because when you're talking about representing people in media who often do not have that much visibility, I think if you look at history, the first win is just getting represented at all, right?

And then the second win is getting represented fairly.

Like I think if you looked back on early depictions of Black people or Jewish people or pick a marginalized group,