Episode 352: Britton Payne: Promoting Authentic Autistic Representation in Pop Culture
This episode, Chris & Rachel interview Britton Payne! Britton Payne is an entertainment attorney who has worked with major studios like Nickelodeon and Warner Bros., and he is also the father of an autistic son. He founded The Autism Scene and created the AUSPEC Awards to promote authentic autistic representation—especially non-speaking AAC users—in children’s animation!
Key Ideas This Week:
Authentic Autistic Representation in Kids’ Media Matters - Britton emphasizes that autistic and non-speaking characters are vastly underrepresented in children’s animation. Because kids’ pop culture reaches every home and classroom, it has huge potential to model empathy, patience, and inclusion—especially for non-speaking autistic people who use AAC. Representation in media can teach children how to interact respectfully with peers long before adulthood.
The Autism Scene and AUSPEC Awards Aim to Change the Industry - Britton founded The Autism Scene and created the AUSPEC Awards, a script competition requiring meaningful interaction with an explicitly autistic character. The competition offers resources, tutorials, sample scripts, and feedback from autism consultants, autistic reviewers, and animation industry leaders. The goal is to help writers create characters that are authentic, non-ableist, and industry-ready—and to make studio executives more comfortable greenlighting shows with autistic characters.
Inclusion Requires Patience, Understanding, and High Expectations - Through stories about his friend Alfonso and conversations about AAC, Britton highlights how neurotypical people must learn to wait, listen, and presume competence—especially with non-speaking AAC users. He stresses that autistic people belong in every genre and every part of society. Giving them space and tools to express themselves enriches everyone’s storytelling and understanding of the world.
Transcript of the Episode
Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.
00:00:08 Chris Bugaj
Welcome to Talking with Tech. My name is Chris Bugaj and I'm here with Rachel Madel. Rachel, how's it going?
00:00:12 Rachel Madel
Great. I'm excited to be here.
00:00:15 Chris Bugaj
We are doing an interview with Britain Payne Britton. Did I say your name right? How about how did I do?
00:00:20 Britton Payne
You did. Usually Britton is what's on the business card and then people call me Brit. B, R I T, Brit.
00:00:25 Chris Bugaj
All right, so Brit, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
00:00:29 Britton Payne
So I'm an entertainment attorney largely working in animation recently of Nickelodeon and Warner Bros. Animation and a while ago I did DC Comics and I also have an autistic son who he's now 11 years old and so we got a diagnosis when he was about 18 months old. So my wife and I have been spending a lot of time since then familiarizing ourselves with autism. And through all of that I decided I wanted to try and figure out how to get yet more explicitly autistic characters in the kids pop culture. In part because I was working in kids pop culture. I was working at Nickelodeon when I was sort of cooking this up and so I started speaking at comic cons and other events. I spoke internally at Nickelodeon a couple times about things like the history of autism in comic books and authentically creating autistic characters in kids animation. So out of that I started a nonprofit earlier this year called the Autism Scene that's dedicated to try and get more autistic, explicitly autistic characters in kids pop culture. And we are holding a competition called the OSPEC Awards which is an animated kids series spec script competition. Spec meaning speculative. So you write a script that nobody asked you to write other than us for the competition. And in the the rule of it is that you have to have a meet a, a series regular meaningfully interacting with an explicitly autistic character. So among those autistic characters of course would be non speaking characters who use AAC devices. One of the, one of the prize categories is going to be best non speaking character and another one is going to be best use of an AAC device. Through all that, one of our board members, Alfonso Camacho, he's a non speaking autistic kid with apraxia. Who's kid, he's 19 now I guess he's a young man and he is on our board and he's a college student now. He uses a couple of different ways of communicating and he's become a friend of mine. He came and saw one of the panels that I was doing and then said that he wanted to be on a panel like that, but he didn't think people would wait for him to respond. And I said, well, then that's maybe if exactly why you should be on the panel. So that people like me who like to chitchat really quickly can learn to wait so that it makes room for more people to have their voices be heard in the first place. And that's what led me to you guys.
00:02:37 Rachel Madel
I love that. Brit. I feel like we've had a lot of AAC users on this podcast, and that's one of the things that they share. So much so that some of our guests have asked us to not edit out some of the pausing, because I think that's one thing that it's a really important concept to understand when someone is formulating a message using aac, it takes some time, and it requires us as the listener to be really patient and not jump in and, you know, fill in that silence. Because sometimes that silence can be a little uncomfortable.
00:03:11 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.
00:03:12 Britton Payne
I mean, I'm an attorney, and at law school, that was clear to me that whenever there was silence, I felt compelled to put up my hand whether or not I had something intelligent to say. And spending more time with Alfonso has shown me that, all right, I can wait and the walls won't close in. Everything is just fine. It's some of the work that I've been doing is trying to acclimate neurotypical people to accommodating and accommodating and including autistic people, and particularly people who are non speaking, because it turns out it's not that big a deal. It's not that hard to do. You just kind of have to know what to do and then do it. So part of the work that I'm doing is trying to help neurotypical people understand those kinds of things.
00:03:51 Chris Bugaj
And Britt, it sounds like by working in animation, if we get now, of course, there's older animation and younger animation, but getting the next generation of kids that are watching animation right now, sort of seeing representation in that way helps them kind of grow up knowing what to do and not having to learn it when you're an adult.
00:04:08 Britton Payne
That's right. And it can be hard to learn as a kid. Right. If you don't have anybody, especially let's focus on non speaking autistic for the sake of this conversation. If you don't have anybody non speaking in your life, then how, as a parent, are you really supposed to meaningfully teach your child and model for them how to behave and Schools, how are the teachers supposed to teach when they have 25 other kids and they don't even necessarily have somebody non speaking in their classroom? The odds are every fourth or fifth classroom would have somebody non speaking and autistic. If the current statistics are 1 in 30 and then 1 in 4 of those are non speaking, you know, the odds are it's somewhere in the building, but they got a lot of kids to deal with. But pop culture is everywhere and all over the place and something that the kids actively seek out. So if you can model that kind of empathy in kids pop culture, you can really make a difference to helping those kids understand better how to treat their non speaking peers. And I think that's where I sort of figured out, okay, well, from the inside, with the Rolodex that I have, what could I do? What little piece of the pie can I contribute to making things a little bit nicer for kids like Alfonso when he was younger and to a certain extent for my son, he does speak, but he is autistic and he also needs empathy and understanding from the people around him and the world around him as he grows up, grows, hopefully launches and goes out into the world.
00:05:27 Chris Bugaj
Britt, I have a question about this. Since you've been talking about, you've been doing this for a while and talking about this for a while, people are interested in this. Like when you're mentioning the Auspect Awards, there's sort of a way that people think they're helpful, but it's sort of ableistic. And I'm curious from your point of view, what kind of things can you do or what have you seen that helps people think about representation in a respectful way, a helpful way, in an accurate way, so that it doesn't lean over to ableism?
00:06:00 Britton Payne
I think that's a terrific question and it's something that as a non autistic person, it's not really my job fully to answer that question. It's my job to set up structure where autism consultants and autistic people and see the works that are coming through the system and coming through the competition and offer their opinions so that the ultimate winners, it's more like throwing spaghetti at the wall, right? You see what sticks. And so I expect, I hope that there'll be an awful lot of people who submit scripts that have all different kinds of representations of autism, where they all really try to do a good job, but the proof is in the pudding. And so the ones that do it well and do it authentically are going to be the ones that the autism consultants and the autistic people in our judging process will be able to sort of give the seal of approval. So it's a little hard for me to say exactly what the creative result would be that would be a good representation. What I can do is try and set up a product process so that at the very least, it's vetted. Look, the work that I'm doing. I think about Sammy Davis Jr. When he was getting on stage with the Rat Pack back in the 60s, where if you read the jokes right now, you would find them extraordinarily offensive and not the kind of thing that you would expect to see in modern, socially acceptable entertainment. But at the time, it was incredibly progressive because there was a black man on stage being treated by his white peers in a community and in a world that didn't always so readily accept it, and it pushed things forward. So I hope that 20 years from now, it's the things that I'm saying will be looked back on as old timey, because that will mean we will have progressed.
00:07:33 Rachel Madel
I love that. I love that. Yes. Tell us a little bit about the awards and how can people get involved? I'm really excited about the work that you're doing, and I love the idea of really trying to showcase in an authentic way, autism and autistic characters. And so how can people join this movement?
00:07:53 Britton Payne
Thank you. And that's very nice of you to say. It's the autismscene.org is our website, so it's just the autism scene with a dot org. And we're trying to make that as much of a resource as possible for people, especially people who are good writers, who do not have that much of an understanding of autism, but nonetheless are interested in the prizes at some level. I don't really care if the people who contribute to this competition have a place in their heart for autism. I care that they create the characters that can then get on tv, that can then help people like my son move more smoothly in the world. And if through this process, they do get some extra understanding of autism, or they do decide that, like, hey, maybe I'll do more autistic characters in my writing in the future, that's terrific. But ultimately, I want to set up a system so that which you can find@theautismscene.org where they get to meet with writers who might hire them, people who are currently running shows that are hired writers and managers who currently are working to place people in the shows that are hiring. That's who the Rolodex is and executives who are currently running. Studios and the parts of studios that make kids animated television. So that it really feels like a jobs connecting network that just happens to have autism as a part. As a component of the process. That's almost like the. That's the price of the ticket. Right. If you put in an autistic character, this competition will hopefully help you with your career. There are lots of different categories. One of the ethos is that autistic people are everywhere, and so they should be everywhere. In pop culture, we're focusing on kids animation, but that they belong in spooky shows and they belong in adventure shows, and they belong in little kids shows, and they belong in musicals, and they belong in any kind of genre of show within animation that you can imagine. Well, that's where they should be. I happen to believe that steps out of the autism world and into. They belong in hip hop music and they belong in video games. And any place where you find people, you should find autistic people. Any place you find characters, you should find autistic characters. And hopefully this is sort of step one. It's the world that I know. It's what my Rolodex can withstand. So if you go to theautismscene.org you can find out how to contribute. Mostly I want people. Even if you've never written a script before, we're going to put up sample scripts. We're going to put up sample outlines. We have a tutorial, not a tutorial video, but an advice video. A lot of fa. A lot of information is trying to help you dive into this world and take a crack at it. Maybe you're a great writer. And if you're already a great writer, we want to help you increase your tools in your toolbox and make your skill set broader so that you can have an ability to write more stories. And in the end, even if you don't win, you've had the process. Yeah. The way people can get involved is by going to the autismscene.org it's just the name of the entity, the autismscene.org and at that website, we're trying to provide resources so that people who are trying to include autistic characters in their writings specifically for animation for this competition can learn a little bit more about how to do things better. There are the decks for presentations that we've given about authentically creating autistic characters, which include a lot of glossary information. For example, terms that you might not be familiar with as a writer that in the autism community, I think people would find very familiar examples of pop culture uses of AAC devices, for example, and non speaking characters, some that you might not be thinking of. Like Grogu from the Mandalorian is a non speaking character who uses an AAC device. Right now it only says yes, no, but who knows what's going to happen in the movie. And to kind of show that autistic characters belong everywhere, that they're autistic people, which is everywhere. And so they belong in romances and in spooky stories and funny stories, kids stories, educational stories, adventure stories, sports, video games, operas, hip hop. Anywhere that you have people and stories, you should have autistic characters. They can fit there. And this competition is hoping to show as a proof of concept that it can work. Part of what I've been trying to do is from below, incentivize writers to create autistic characters in their writing and from above, try and tenderize executives so that it doesn't feel so scary when they hear the word autism or when they see a non speaking character who's going to have pauses or something unusual that they're worried is a little bit risky. They're trying, especially in this current environment, they're trying not to get fired. And so a competition like this hopefully can just put it in the air that non speaking characters and autistic characters are belong in scripts. They are perfectly normal to have in the scripts and in the world. Using the word autism, using the language of the community in a way that works, that is true to the voices of the show. So the website theautismscene.org is trying to make that all work. And then, you know, if there, if somebody has more information or suggestions like we want to know, we want to try and over time, if this is successful, expand it to any, any other medium that we can. We know. Our mission, our mission is to try and help writers create autistic characters that can get on the air. Not just to live in a, in a box somewhere, not just to be a very special episode of Rugrats or fanfic. That would never, ever happen. You know, SpongeBob enters, smoking a cigar, is not going to get on the air. So we want to help people write these projects in a way that can get them on the air. Because that's some of the expertise that I and the people in my Rolodex have. And for your younger listeners, a Rolodex is a context, but it's a physical object that older people used to keep track of their phone numbers in. And now it's just a metaphor.
00:13:33 Chris Bugaj
Okay, so I've decided I'm going to write this. I'm going to write something, and I'm going to submit my script. What happens next? Like you said, you have a committee of people that are looking at it.
00:13:44 Britton Payne
Yes. So the. The submission period opens December 1, although at the moment the website is accepting commissions and donations. The submission fee is a $25 donation to the autism scene, which is mostly. I haven't seen any other competition that's. That's very low for spec script competitions of this nature. And then the script will come in essentially to me, and we're going to. The scripts are anonymized so that when you send it in, the form that you submit it with has your information, but the script does not. So it's ess a blind reading of all these scripts. A professional is going to be no more advantaged than somebody who's never written a script before. We're going to have an initial batch of readers who are going to go through and essentially sort and grade all of the scripts so that all the different categories. Is this a sci fi script? Is this a comedy script? That kind of thing? They'll be sorted out that way for which categories of prize they might be up for. They get graded. Eventually, we whittle them down to what we think is Maybe the top three or five in each of the 15 or so categories of prize. And then we are going to have autism consultants come in and read them to sort of offer their opinions on the authenticity, the representation of autism in the scripts. We are also going to run some sort of a mild background check. These are all for kids projects. And so we just want to make sure that the people who are involved aren't problematic. And we're not really trying to filter anybody out other than in the most egregious cases. That's really what we're trying to do. We're not trying to cause any controversy or anything. And then we're going to have that. That top three or top five scripts are going to be looked at by industry professionals who are luminaries in their field. So people who have one guy who has run the DC Animated Universe for the last 10 or 15 years, he's going to be the one giving either best sci fi or best superhero story, or depending on exactly what the submissions are, he's going to look at those five scripts, pick the one that he thinks deserves to be the winner, and then he is himself going to present the Award to that writer. The awards ceremony on April 2, which, as you know, is World ISM Awareness Day, or sometimes World Autism Acceptance Day, April 2, 2026, at the Nickelodeon Animation Studios building in the Hillenburg Theater, named after the guy who created spongebob. So the hope is that it becomes this, this widely accepted sort of social thing to do in Los Angeles in the script writing community again, to sort of help normalize it and let people look forward to it and let people just even consider creating autistic and non spe characters in their works. There are a few examples where they've done it and it's been terrific. So hopefully that will just be the, you know, the. Thin edge of the wedge.
00:16:26 Chris Bugaj
Brit, I have a tough question for you. I mean, I have two questions, but here's the first one about submissions. So now we're living in the world of generative AI, and some people use generative AI to help them with their abilities. Right. So how is the awards handling the use of generative AI?
00:16:44 Britton Payne
The tools that are out there for people to create things like this are incredible. But this is a competition for people. And so we are. We'Re noting that this is a competition for people. Sometimes people are going to use AI to do a little bit of research or a little bit of jargon, but by and large, we expect that this will. That AI will not be meaningfully used. And my understanding from the people who read scripts that people submit, they can tell that AI just isn't at the point where if you're writing a script like this, that it can generate something that passes muster. So even if somebody were to use AI, it's not that likely that they would be as successful as if they had written it themselves. And then on the backside, when somebody's going to get. If we know somebody's going to get an award, we'll ask them. We'll also follow up with the questions as we do. That's really when we're talking about a background check. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about, just getting to know somebody just a smidgen and ask them if they're using AI because there are a lot of people, first of all, they're not going to be able to use AI when they get work. And this is intended to try and help people get work because we want them to work so that these scripts and ideas like this get on the screen. Right now, the state of the industry is we're not using AI for projects like this, for the broad projects. And so we expect that people in the competition won't use it either.
00:18:03 Chris Bugaj
Awesome. Awesome. All right, here's my next question. And that is, okay, you live and work in this world of entertainment with studio executives. So we've spent this time to create great scripts with great representation. Do you feel like studio executives know that there's a market for it, or is that what you're talking about? Moving the needle? Like they will go, yeah, I see that green light it or whatever. I don't know what that means. You know what I mean? But that we're going to move it forward, or is it going to die on somebody's doorstep? Because inclusivity is a word that's in the public eye right now. Do you know how? I don't know. Just talk about that in general. How do you think it's going to go?
00:18:41 Britton Payne
My hope is that it creates an environment where it doesn't feel so weird and it doesn't feel risky and it feels not like I'm not expecting anybody, especially on the executive side of things, to do these things, because they have a good feeling in their heart about inclusivity. They do happen to have those feelings in their heart. I've talked to them. But they also have feelings about cancer and about other issues, you know, world, the environment and other things. And so to expect somebody else to take up your banner, I think, is asking a little too much. What we can expect them to do is if they read a good script, to try to champion that good script to make them look better. And I think that's really what I'm trying to have this competition focus on, is that the scripts need to be really, really good. If you're looking at two scripts and one script is a perfect voice fit for the show, it feels like it could be an episode of the show. And the representation of autism is authentic, but not a particularly big swing versus a script that has a very big swing for the representation of autism and the character who's in it, but doesn't quite match the voice of the show. Well, the one that doesn't match the voice of the show is not getting to air, so it may as well just be in a drawer, even though the exercise of writing it was lovely. But if it doesn't get to the air, then it's not fulfilling the hope of the show. And in fact, it's showing that if you inject an autistic character, it's not going to match the voice of the show. So we shouldn't inject autistic characters. Whereas the Other one says, hey, guess what? Here's a brilliant script. There's an autistic character, and it's a brilliant script. They're going to hear. The executive is going to hear, brilliant script, and that's what they're looking for. Now, I have sort of kicked around the places that I know of within studios. And as much as people are interested in doing good things, awards don't move the needle at this level. And praise. And sometimes it's nice to have a little thing that you can put in a promo once it gets done, but that it's not going to move the needle. It's not making it more likely to get on the air. Is there a market to see autistic characters on screen in this world? There are certain places where you can go, like Carl the Collector is a show that has an explicitly autistic lead character and an explicitly autistic friend on the show as a series regular. And I think the people who go to that show don't go watch it because it's about autism. I think they go watch it. I'm talking about little kids, because it's interesting or funny or fun or sweet or something that they're looking for. Helps them better understand the world around them by teaching them, oh, if I fall off my bike, I can get back up and ride again. Or if something weird happens, I should go tell my mom or, you know, whatever the lessons are of even a show like that. So I don't. I recognize the reason to ask the question, and I think the answer is just, you have to make good scripts. You might even have to make better scripts than regular scripts in order to push something to the air that's going to have something like this in it. And so then the goal is, all right, well, then let's just do it. Let's get better scripts.
00:21:40 Chris Bugaj
Awesome. Yeah.
00:21:41 Rachel Madel
I love it. I love it.
00:21:42 Chris Bugaj
Well, okay, Brit, is there anything else? Did you want people to know? Do you want to brag on your son a little bit to the extent you're comfortable?
00:21:50 Britton Payne
My son's terrific. He's learning how to do video editing. That's his real exciting thing to do. He got interviewed the other day by somebody who social worker or somebody who's helping him out. And they asked what he liked to do. He said video editing is what he likes to do, which is pretty true. He brags about the different programs. He knows he impressed the guy at the Operation Apple store that he knew how to use Final Cut Pro. And the Apple Store guy said he didn't know how to use Final Cut Pro. It's very exciting. Yeah, I think there are. I like the idea that AAC users can find themselves in pop culture because right now there just aren't that many. I do this panel called the History of Autism and Comic. Not the history, but Autism in Comic Books. And even in comic books there are very few AAC users. There are similar devices that are kind of fun to explore, like a universal translator that you put in your ear so that when you meet the aliens, you can understand what they're saying. And that, you know, is in its own way an AC device. But it doesn't. Which is lovely. You know, I'll take it. But it would be. I would like to see more. I would like to get to a point where you don't have to say what an AAC device is to an average person. You know, people who come to your podcast are interested in AAC devices and interested in non speaking people. And the. A normal. An average person who's not in that community doesn't know what AAC device is. It'd be nice if they did.
00:23:14 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, Brit, I just want to comment on that for a second because I find that is something I see and I am always trying to make a decision. On this podcast and in the work that I do in public schools and beyond is a lot of the representation we see about AAC is often. You gave a perfect example of Grogu, right? Awesome. Oh, my gosh. It's in Star Wars. It's. Yes. No, it's not very robust. A lot of the cartoon characters show some sort of thing that has like six words on it. It's not very robust. And part of the mission of this podcast to be like, we can have a lot more words than six, six words. But I also recognize, like, yeah, but it's awesome that there's representation, but could we just tweak it in this way? Right. And so I feel like I'm always doing this dance.
00:23:58 Britton Payne
It reminds me of Shawshank Redemption, where every day he wrote a letter to the state, the governor, asking him to give him books in the library at the prison. And then final, after a year of writing letters, he got a delivery of books and a letter from the governor that said, here are the books that you've requested, please stop writing. And so then the guard says, are you going to stop writing? He says, no. Now I know that it works. I'm going to write two letters a day. And I think that's the kind of in the dark place Andy to frame that in upbeat attitude. And I think we can too, where we say that's terrific, he got on, Grogu got on there. Now we can use that as a for instance that we can point to in describing these kinds of things. And it's time for more. I think it's particularly interesting to hear from very young and new non speaking people who are, through technology are able to communicate. A friend of mine's daughter is not speaking and she has, along with a bunch of her friends at one of her schools or something, they have blogs that they do. And so it's a blog from a non speaking. I think she's nine now. She might have started when she was eight or seven. And just to be able to get to know somebody a little bit better, somebody who is otherwise a normal 7 year old kid who just has this different kind of profile and this different kind of presentation that can really affect where they fit in the world. So a lot of people in the autism community talk about presuming incompetence and I think that that is even more challenging when you're talking about somebody who's non speaking, Somebody you have to wait for, somebody who communicates in a way that you're not particularly used to. Even for parents. I think that can be challenging when you first connect your child with the right kind of AAC device that they can use to communicate, to not just assume that all they want to say is yes and no. Let Grogu, or even. What they're interested in doing is getting their needs met directly, like, oh, I need to go to the bathroom or I need food. But ask them to tell jokes or ask them. To write fiction with them, make up stories, create things, use these tools to do more than just the basic fundamental things that you can do because. You don't know where the, the flower is going to grow through the crack in the sidewalk. And so you kind of have to look around and see if you can help facilitate that happening. An AAC device requires more than just the device. It requires the support people around them. That's something Alfonso would talk about, is that he acknowledges that the reason that he's able to connect with the world and contribute, he's a terrific writer, is because he's got people around him who worked really hard to try and make it happen. And so that's kind of what you guys are doing with your podcast and encouraging therapists out there to try new things and to learn about new technologies, because that's how these voices are going to be able to get out into the world and provide rich, new, interesting perspectives and stories to people who are tired of hearing stories about people. I'm a middle aged white man. People like me, they want to hear new and interesting things. And there are all these people around you who are super interesting who have not been able to connect with you and now they can through a device like this. Your life is going to be richer too, whether or not you've ever known anybody who's not speaking.
00:26:59 Rachel Madel
Yes. If you were holding a mic, Brit, I feel like you should drop it. Couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.
00:27:08 Chris Bugaj
All right, Brett, one more time. Give us the website. You know how to lead us out with the right marketing.
00:27:15 Britton Payne
Yes. The website is the autism scene. Theautismscene.org and the competition is called the AUSPEC Awards. AU for a common prefix for autism and spec for spec script, which means speculative. So it's the Auspec Awards. If you know anybody who's interested in writing, spread the word, have them take a look. Theautismscene.org and if you have somebody who's may be interested, here's a nice way to have a little bit of a tutorial and a little bit of motivation to give it a shot.
00:27:43 Rachel Madel
Awesome. Well, we'll definitely link to that in the show notes. We'll get this episode out as soon as possible. And thank you so much, Brit for coming on. It was such a pleasure talking to you.
00:27:51 Britton Payne
Thank you both. I appreciate it.
00:27:53 Chris Bugaj
Appreciate you. Bye now.