RJ Mitte, famous for his role as Walter Jr. in AMC’s Breaking Bad, didn’t finish his career with the show’s final season. Not only does he play Campbell in ABC Family’s current television series, Switched at Birth, but Mitte is also doing a speaking tour around the country about disorders and bullying. On Thursday, Mitte made an appearance at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Mitte has cerebral palsy, a disorder of movement, muscle tone or posture, caused by an abnormality in the developing brain, usually before birth. Those with cerebral palsy may have stiffness of the limbs, abnormal posture, unsteadiness of walking or involuntary movements.
Some people with cerebral palsy use walking assistant aids, such as leg crutches, like Walter Jr. did in Breaking Bad. Others use wheelchairs. Mitte said he used crutches and wheelchairs on and off, but he kept working through it with painful exercises and treatments. So now, unlike what his characters portray, Mitte does not need assistance.
“I was diagnosed with my disorder at the age three, but for the longest time they didn’t understand what I had,” Mitte said. “I was what they called a severe toe-walker, so my feet were practically straight. I walked on the tips of them.”
UNC’s Best Buddies program, an international organization, hosted the event, “An Evening with RJ Mitte.” UNC students and members of the Chapel Hill community with intellectual and developmental disabilities pair together through Best Buddies to develop a friendship through large group events and one-to-one meetings. Mitte explained how this type of relationship can be motivation for people with disabilities.
“Best Buddies allows you to grow, and the thing is that you have to have people when you have a disability constantly pushing you, because you don’t want to do this normally,” Mitte said. “No one wants to do their leg stretches, no one wants to do their therapy for hours on end. How many people actually do their homework on time? Right there, it’s the same thing. But it’s your body; you have to push people to do it.”
Friends through the Best Buddies program can be there for each other for support as well as for motivation. Mitte said he was lucky enough to have his family to support and push him to do his exercises and that it takes an amount of will and support to get through setbacks.
“For hours, my mother would make me fold towels and she would come over and knock them over,” Mitte said. “And, if it wasn’t for me wanting to get better and stronger, I would’ve said, ‘Forget it, I’m not folding anymore,’ but I wanted that. I wanted to have control over my body and to be stronger and faster. If you’re able to instill that into someone, if you’re able to instill will into somebody that will do more than anything.”
Mitte said bullying is common, particularly for people with disabilities.
“Growing up with a disability makes you a target,” Mitte said. “It makes you stand out. And the thing about it is people see that as a sign of weakness and people try to play off that, but that’s a sign of weakness in themselves.”
Mitte challenged the crowd when he said whenever someone gets bullied in any type of way to go stop it and make a difference.
“You have a voice to make it stop, you have a voice to say ‘this is enough,’” Mitte said. “You cannot let people take away your power, and who you are and what you’re capable of. They’re going to try to take away what you want and who you are and use it for themselves. At the end of the day, though, they can’t. It’s who you are and what makes you, you. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Don’t let anyone try to change you.”
Mitte said it was important to keep in mind that bullying is not always in the form of face-to-face contact, but through social media as well.
“In social media, people don’t realize what they say, what they do and what they put out there,” Mitte said. “… but you have to think about what you post and what you say because it’s not what you say to the other person, it’s about what other people take away from it.”
There are so many times where people, especially those with disabilities, cannot defend themselves, but need the help from someone else, according to Mitte. He also said people sometimes feel scared to reach out and help in these situations. Yet if a person is helping out of genuine kindness, there is no reason to be scared.
“You will see an incident where people need your help, they need that difference, they need a helping hand,” Mitte said, “but are you willing to step out of your realm of comfort? Are you willing to make that difference in somebody else’s life?”
Mitte is involved in multiple disability related organizations. Among these are United Cerebral Palsy, Shriner’s Hospital for Children and the IMPWD (I Am a Person With a Disability), which deals with actor’s equity and diversity.
“I work to make TV scripts accurate, from the standpoints of, there is only 2 percent of people with a disability on television when there’s about 75 percent of people around the world with a disability,” Mitte said “… and when it comes down to it, it’s actually 100 percent because everyone has a disability, everyone has their challenges, everyone has their faults — that is a disability. When people think of a disability, they think of physical, they think of mental, and it’s not. It’s anything that hinders you, anything that’s trying to prevent you from being who you are.”
Mitte said the best one can do for someone with disabilities is give them the knowledge that they can live their own life — a full and normal life. According to Mitte, it’s common for people to think that people with a disability don’t have a right to be a functional adult, which is completely untrue because they can live a normal life and have goals.
“At the end of the day, normal is whatever makes you happy, whatever you want to have,” Mitte said. “I think that’s the biggest thing with a disability, is having them find that place where they can consider themselves comfortable.”
