You it seems to get crazier as we delve deeper into the demented mind of Joe Goldberg. In season 3, Joe and Love move to the idyllic California suburb of Mother Linda, where they plan to raise their son Henry away from the shadow of his murderous past. However, Love and Joe can’t escape the carnage that exists within them.
The dream falls apart after Joe kills Love in self-defense and burns down her house. She leaves Henry with his blind coworker Dante and her husband, Lansing. Dante was one of the new characters introduced in season 3. It’s unlikely that Joe plans to leave his son forever; therefore, it is very likely that Dante will appear in the next season.
Rising star Ben Mehl deftly plays Dante in You. Ben is not totally blind, but he is visually impaired.
Contents
- 1 Ben Mehl has Stargardt disease, which causes a progressive loss of central vision
- 2 Mehl points to her late mother as her greatest inspiration in life.
- 3 Ben is so busy with his twin daughters that he doesn’t watch much television.
- 4 Ben worked with a specialist to better highlight Dante’s total blindness.
- 5 Ben hopes his career will improve after his appearance on You
Ben Mehl has Stargardt disease, which causes a progressive loss of central vision
Ben Mehl realized something was wrong with his vision while performing Reefer Madness on stage. “It was like when a flash goes off and you have that point in your vision,” he said. University of Toronto Magazine. Except mine never left.
Specialists diagnosed Ben Mehl with a degenerative condition called Stargardt disease. This rare disease causes progressive loss of central vision and has no known treatment or cure. Mehl began to rethink his career when his vision became so poor that he could not recognize faces or read normal-size text.
well I talk to Authority Magazine about the doubts he had about dedicating himself to acting: “How could he read my scripts? How would I see the expression on my scene partner’s face? After taking some time to grieve the loss of my central vision and accept my new life, I decided that I would not let this disease define me and learn what it meant to be an actor with this disability.”
Juilliard and the NYU Graduate Program in Acting accepted Ben’s applications, and he chose NYU and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts. Mehl used ingenuity and technology to adapt to his condition: he looks slightly over someone’s head and uses peripheral vision to see their face, and always has a tablet to improve script texts. performance.
Without his positive mindset, Ben would not have overcome the challenge posed by Stargardt’s disease. He’s not sure if he’ll ever lose sight of it, but he’s confident it won’t hinder his life or his career. ben told him University of Toronto Magazine:
“I don’t know how it will progress, but I am no longer afraid. I don’t have these ideas of how my life is supposed to be, and that my illness is something that will prevent me from achieving it. I am curious about the infinite spectrum of possibilities.”
Mehl points to her late mother as her greatest inspiration in life.
Walter McBride/Getty Images
Ben Mehl was born in Toronto years after his parents and two older brothers immigrated from South Africa. “I came as a surprise,” Ben said. Authority Magazine. Mehl always loved acting and performing and he couldn’t hide his excitement at seeing his brothers in school shows.
“My parents would always say, ‘oh, you’re such a great artist’ whenever I’d do silly things to try and make them laugh,” Ben said. the national mail. While in fourth grade, Ben received advice from his teacher to audition for the Claude Watson School of the Arts.
The school only had one place in the fifth grade and Ben got it thanks to the encouragement he received from his mom. “My mom always told me that there was no such thing as ‘I can’t’ and that she could do whatever she put her mind to,” Mehl said. Authority Magazine.
Mehl benefited from Claude Watson’s additional focus on the arts. She graduated from Earl Haig High School, where she developed a love and passion for space. However, he did not want to give up his dream of acting, so he chose an institution that offered a double major in Astrophysics and Drama. He explained:
“When it came time to go to college, I wasn’t ready to stop acting, but I also wanted to continue studying science and really wanted to be an astronaut one day. So I went to the University of Toronto where I could and majored in Astrophysics and Drama.”
Ben’s mother continued to inspire Ben until her death. mehl said Authority Magazine that she passed away two months after he welcomed his twin daughters. He summed up her impact on her life as follows:
“She had been my inspiration and guiding light throughout my life. She saw the struggles in her life as challenges to face. She inspired me to accept the Stargardt challenge and continue on my path. She was always there for me to cheer me up. With the loss of her, I feel like I’m looking in new directions for help as much as she can.”
Ben is so busy with his twin daughters that he doesn’t watch much television.
Authority Magazine
Ben spends a lot of time with his twin daughters, as his wife works full time as a healthcare worker. Between working and raising his daughters, Mehl doesn’t have enough time to watch TV shows.
Therefore, Mehl had not heard of You before auditioning for the role of Dante. He said the national mail:: “Honestly, I had not seen you or heard of that. I quickly found out that he was one of the only people in the world who didn’t know, love, or look forward to season three!
At first Ben didn’t understand why. You attracted so many people. He only became a fan of the series after appreciating the humor that was woven into the chaos. “There was a lot of humor in it, I couldn’t stop watching and I started to really appreciate the writing and the acting,” said Ben. ScreenRant.
Ben learned that she had booked the role while running a bath for her daughters. He spoke with ScreenRant on her hilarious reception to the news that she got a role she wanted so badly:
“I really, really wanted this role, and I was hoping beyond hope that that’s what the call was about. My agent said that I got the part and that she was delighted. I said, ‘I can’t talk about this right now, I’m giving my daughters a bath.’ I’m going to have to call you back.
Ben’s journey to starring You It started with a friend of his wife’s who put him in touch with a massage therapist friend in San Francisco who also has Stargardt disease. The friend introduced Ben to Marilee Talkington, who is visually impaired and is a strong advocate for the inclusion of blind and low vision actors.
“He had put in a lot of hours and a lot of heart to help open doors for actors with disabilities,” said Ben. Authority Magazine. “Without the work of many disabled activist artists like her, she may never have had the opportunity to audition for this role.”
Ben worked with a specialist to better highlight Dante’s total blindness.
Ben and Dante have vision problems, but Dante is totally blind while Ben is partially blind. Ben took pains to depict Dante’s total blindness as accurately as possible. “It became very important to me to accurately represent that,” Mehl said. UNILAD.
Mehl worked with an orientation and mobility specialist to learn how to use a white cane. He trained blindfolded and not blindfolded and realized that playing Dante offered him the freedom to focus on his blind spots.
“I usually have a hard time concentrating on what I can see in my peripheral vision, but playing Dante, for once I was able to focus on the void in the center of my vision,” Ben said. Authority Magazine. “It was an incredible kind of release for me to just let go and stop watching. At times I felt like I was preparing myself for what the future would hold.”
Ben asked showrunner Sera Gamble, who based the character of Dante on his godfather, how best to play Dante. He asked questions about small but essential matters, like eye placement. “I didn’t want to get frozen or punched or overemphasize some kind of perceived notion of what blindness is in the eyes,” Ben said. ScreenRant. because it looks different [for] all.”
Mehl spent hours studying how blind people got in and out of a house built to house them. He appreciated the ‘confidence and poise’ they displayed as they moved and strove to display that confidence as he played Dante. He added:
“What became so important was not portraying someone who was groping around trying to find things, but someone who really understands how to navigate the world without seeing; someone who has had that experience and can live with confidence and independence like Dante does.”
Ben loves that Sera didn’t use Dante’s blindness to shape the plot. Before reading the scripts, she suspected that Dante’s blindness would be a central plot point. To Ben’s pleasant surprise, Ben learned that Sera introduced Dante because blind people exist and deserve screen representation. He said UNILAD:
“He [Dante] he’s just blind, just like some of us have blue eyes, so he’s really normalized. It’s not something extraordinary, which I think is really extraordinary… He has his particular blind spots and other people have theirs, and we all navigate them to the best of our ability.”
Ben hopes his career will improve after his appearance on You
Ben knew it would be difficult to introduce a new character in the third season of such a successful show, but he relished the opportunity to work with such a talented cast. Critics and fans alike agree that Ben did a stellar job in his portrayal of Dante. ben told him Albuquerque Journal:
“Going into this series, it was already a success before I got here. To see this amazing machine with so many talented people working towards the same goal. I went in and did my job and tried to portray Dante as accurately as possible. That was the challenge I set myself.”
Mehl has faced a lot of rejection in his acting career. “Audition, get rejected, audition, get rejected, audition, get rejected,” he said. the national mail. Ben hopes that in the future he will have more opportunities to appear on screen. He said ScreenRant:
“What excites me, and what I always hope for, is to have a wide range of different characters. What brought me to theater was really transforming me into different people. So what I hope as I continue is to get to play very different characters. That is my ambition.”
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn