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The stars of'BornThisWay'are hoping to winEmmyAwards
“My favorite things was-oh my god-meeting my idol AdamLambert
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The stars of 'Born This Way' are hoping to win Emmy Awards
Sept. 9, 2016
By PETER LARSEN / STAFF WRITER
Orange County residents Steven Clark, Rachel Osterbach and Sean McElwee star in “Born This Way,” a reality program about seven young adults living with Down Syndrome. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Rachel Osterbach picked out a lovely black-and-silver dress a week or so ago, and on Sunday afternoon, a shiny black town car will pull into the driveway of her Fountain Valley home to carry her to Los Angeles where she just might – if luck is with her – come home with an Emmy.
“I’ll be like a movie star,” says Osterbach, one of seven young adults with Down syndrome who star in the A&E network reality series “Born This Way.” “That’s like the real actresses, like Emma Watson, for example. She walks on red carpets, and that’s really cool.
“I love it,” she says with wide-eyed anticipation of the big day to come. “Very exciting.”
Osterbach, 33, Sean McElwee, 22, and Steven Clark, 25, gathered recently at Clark’s family home in Irvine to talk about the Emmys, the second season of “Born This Way” that’s currently underway, and what it’s been like to go from private lives in Orange County to ones shared with a national audience on the cable network.
Four more cast members live in and around Los Angeles, including Cristina Sanz, John Tucker, Elena Ashmore and Megan Bomgaars, who recently moved to Southern California from Colorado. All will attend the Emmys on Sunday with at least one parent as their date for the night.
“Born This Way” is nominated for outstanding unstructured reality program at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday, a category that finds it competing with “Deadliest Catch,” which won this Emmy the past two years, “Intervention,” “Project Greenlight,” “Gaycation with Ellen Page,” and “United Shades of America.” (It’s also nominated twice in the category for outstanding picture editing for an unstructured reality program.)
“It’s a big deal,” says McElwee, a self-professed ladies man who seems as excited by the possibility of meeting actress Vanessa Hudgens – one of his several celebrity crushes – as he is by the nomination itself.
Clark, meanwhile, whose knowledge of movies is encyclopedic, says he’s excited that actor Morgan Freeman will be there, not to mention a competitor with whom he once compared himself in an episode of “Born This Way.”
“I actually thought of myself as the Matt Damon of the bunch,” he says of the actor and executive producer of “Project Greenlight.” “I could meet Matt Damon!”
Unlike some reality shows, “Born This Way” makes viewers feel good about watching the cast members navigate their way through life and love, successes and disappointments. It’s a sweet, heart-warming antidote to the many shows that feature bickering, back-biting and bad behavior. It’s often quite funny, and always uplifting.
“My dad went on Twitter and there’s a lot of people who think I’m an inspiration to them,” Osterbach says. “I think it feels really good. I love people inspiring me a lot, and I can inspire other people, too.”
The disability that seven cast members were born with is just one aspect of their lives, and no true limit to the richness of experiences in their futures. The first season of six episodes premiered in December. The eighth episode of 10 in the second season will air on A&E on Tuesday.
All of which means that they now have had plenty of experience as public personalities.
“I went to Kohl’s with my mom and three people recognized me,” Osterbach says. “And we went to Mimi’s for brunch and someone recognized me.”
Her mother says that’s just a small part of it. “She gets it all the time,” Laurie Osterbach says.
“I get it all the time,” her daughter agreed. “How ’bout you guys? Anyone recognized you a lot?”
Clark says he’s often spotted at his job as a courtesy clerk at Albertsons, and once at his favorite restaurant, the Lazy Dog Cafe, the staff brought him a free dessert when they realized who they were serving.
And McElwee, well, he might have had the wildest experience of all. While he was walking into the Honda Center for a Demi Lovato concert last month, a young woman recognized him and said she’d try to get him backstage to meet Lovato. It was the singer’s sister, Dallas Lovato, and she was so excited to meet him she was nearly in tears.
The backstage meeting didn’t happen – “Dallas says she’s too busy with her whole tour thing,” McElwee explains – but a few nights later Dallas Lovato invited Sean to Dave & Buster’s with some of her friends, his father Rick McElwee says, and he didn’t get home until nearly midnight.
Did we mention he’s a ladies’ man?
The cast have also had plenty of fun experiences in the course of filming the series – Osterbach was one of three frm the show who went to a Down syndrome conference in Trinidad during one episode – and off-camera, too. Most of the cast attended a conference in Orlando this summer, where they were treated like rock stars by other Down syndrome men and women, boys and girls, signing autographs for an hour or more, posing for countless photos.
“My favorite things was – oh my god – meeting my idol Adam Lambert,” Osterbach said. “‘Ghost Town’ was my favorite song and he sang that for me.”For McElwee, the highlight came in the second season when he went to Las Vegas to see Justin Bieber in concert, had a blind date and but for the lack of more money in his bank account might have come home with a Bieber-inspired tattoo.
Clark, meanwhile, says his favorite part of the show isn’t just one experience, but instead how the second season has given him more screen time as he’s struggled to figure out what kind of relationship, and what kind of girl, he’d like to find.
“I really did have a lot of drama in that subject area, which was girls, so I’ll have to say that meeting this person that I already have now” – to say anything further would be to spoil an upcoming surprise – “has really made a change,” he says.
For now, there’s no word yet on whether A&E execs will order a third season, but the cast hopes they do, and the fans, who in some cases have found the show from literally halfway around the world, do too.
“Sean one day gets a message on his Facebook page from a special ed teacher in Israel who somehow heard about the show, pulled them off the Internet and showed them to her classes,” Rick McElwee says.
“The head of A&E who runs this show, he also runs ‘Duck Dynasty,’” he says. “So after the Israel thing I was joking with him and said, ‘Hey, does ‘Duck Dynasty’ get watched in Israel?’
“He got real serious and said, ‘You know what? “Duck Dynasty” doesn’t change lives.’”
Born This Way'Starring: Elena Ashmore, Megan Bomgaars, Steven Clark, Sean McElwee, Rachel Osterbach, Cristina Sanz, John Tucker
Created by: Bunim/Murray Productions, which pioneered reality TV in 1992 with MTV's "The Real World"
Airs: 10 p.m. Tuesdays on A&E
Nomination: The show is up for outstanding unstructured reality program at the Creative Arts Emmys, which take place Sunday and will air at 8 p.m. Sept. 17 on FXX