Film - ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’

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When Dakota Johnson signed on to star and produce in “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” the first film under her Tea Time Pictures production company, director and writer Cooper Raiff wasn’t set to act in the production at all. But Johnson encouraged Raiff to change his mind, believing that he was perfect for the lead role of Andrew, a bar mitzvah party starter who befriends a single mom and her autistic daughter.

Johnson and Raiff were joined by “Cha Cha Real Smooth” cast members Vanessa Burghardt, Leslie Mann, Evan Assante, Raúl Castillo and Odeya Rush in a conversation hosted by Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson.

Cha Cha Real Smooth” is the first professional acting credit for Burghardt, who identifies as autistic and portrays Lola, the daughter of Johnson’s character Domino. Burghardt said she was drawn to the project because she felt her character avoided many of the stereotypes and clichés that often define portrayals of autism in film.

“Most of the auditions I get are for autistic characters and they’re usually very stereotyped, like a shell of what people think autistic people are supposed to be,” Burghardt said. “But Lola seemed like a fully formed person. And I really like that.”

The disability advocacy group RespectAbility said it consulted on Burghardt’s role in the film.

“Cha Cha Real Smooth” originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year where it won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.

The film is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Apple TV+.

"Cha Cha Real Smooth" cast unknown actress Vanessa Burghardt to play Lola, the introverted teenager with autism whom the film's protagonist Andrew (Cooper Raiff) babysits while trying to woo her anxious single mother, Domino (Dakota Johnson). Burghardt, like her character, has autism in real life

As an autistic film critic, I was excited if somewhat cautious about "Cha Cha Real Smooth" back at Sundance in January, but I left the film impressed.

Raiff, who wrote, directed, and starred in the film, has a lot of smart things to say about relationships and growing up, and he gets great performances from everyone involved. I was particularly impressed with Burghardt, whose character could have easily been a stereotype, but thanks to great writing and acting instead comes across as a real and convincing person.

Speaking with Burghardt ahead of the film's theatrical and streaming release on June 17, she explained how she helped build the character of Lola. Raiff consulted with the organization Respect Ability, a nonprofit that promotes empowerment and self-advocacy for individuals with disabilities, while writing the initial script, but Burghardt was the main autistic voice in the production once she got the role.

She told Insider that she and the director had "a lot of conversations about Lola's character, about how she feels in social situations or what kind of response she might have to her mom."

"We really did change a lot of the script when we started talking," Burghardt added.

The actress pointed to one specific example of a detail that was added to the film directly from a conversation she had with Raiff. "There was a scene that we were doing in my room and I was supposed to kind of just be there with the lights off just kind of relaxing," Burghardt said. "And I ended up doing this thing where I flap my hands because I do that a lot."

"It's something I do to regulate, and I felt like Lola as an autistic character probably does something like that, and Cooper was fine with it so it made it into the movie," she continued.

Burghardt brought a lot of herself to the role of Lola. When asked her biggest similarities with her character, she answered, "Lola and I are very similar in the way that we care about people but kind of express it in a different way and want to be social but don't really know how to initiate it."

The biggest differences between the two are ones of maturity; Lola is around 14 or 15 (her specific age isn't stated, but she's attending bar and bat mitzvahs with 12- and 13-year-olds and is said to have been held back a couple grades), and while Burghardt was even more like Lola at that age, now she says, "I'm older than Lola, so I think I'm a little bit more socially mature and a little less rigid than her."

It's important to note that, while Lola is a well-developed character, she is not the film's main character. "Cha Cha Real Smooth" is mostly about Andrew, whose extremely extroverted nature makes a dramatic contrast with Lola's social discomfort, and Domino, who loves her daughter but struggles with depression.

If I was to anticipate any criticism of the film coming from neurodiversity-minded circles, it's that it's yet another story where the feelings of the parent/caretaker of a child with autism take greater prominence than the feelings of the child with autism themself.

Even with this in mind, however, "Cha Cha Real Smooth" is valuable in offering a much more sensitive and nuanced perspective than most so-called "autism mom" stories, which often center the parent to the detriment of building the child as a wholly realized character. Burghardt said it's one of the things she likes most about the film.

"It's not talking about how Lola is the burden or the child with the disability is the burden, it's talking about why her mom feels that way, and it's not all because of her," she said. "It kind of took the feeling that the autistic child is the one who's burdening the parent when in reality it's the parent, they have their own things that they're dealing with."

When asked about the controversial issue of neurotypical actors playing autistic characters, Burghardt is clear she prefers such roles "be reserved for people who have the experience of being neurodiverse, because you're never going to get it completely right if you haven't had that experience." She's similarly passionate about wanting "more open-mindedness" from casting directors about autistic actors to get the chance to play roles not specifically written as autistic.

"People say that they want to include you and they love diversity," Burghardt told Insider. "But if you're not what they're looking for — maybe the character is neurotypical and you're autistic — and they're not really willing to be flexible and include you in it, then you don't really want diversity."

Though "Cha Cha Real Smooth" is her first movie role, Burghardt has experience acting in neurotypical roles on stage. She's not interested in continuing with theater, however, and thinks film acting plays better to her strengths.

"I'm not someone who is very overt in the way that I express emotion," she explained, "and I feel like in stage acting it can be seen as I'm not doing enough, but in film acting, I'm always doing enough, people just need to look a little bit harder, and I kind of like that."

When it comes to neurodiversity on screen, Burghardt wants to see more. She praised the
Netflix reality series "Love on the Spectrum," which follows the dating lives of young adults on the autism spectrum, for being "authentic," but overall, she feels there are simply not enough examples of quality autistic representation she can point to. Her presence in "Cha Cha Real Smooth" makes a difference — and will hopefully be the start of a long and successful career.

"I'd like to continue acting," she said. "I'm auditioning all the time, and I'm really looking forward to finding the right role."

For “Cha Cha Real Smooth” casting director Angela Demo, it was out of the question to consider neurotypical actors for the part of Lola, who is on the autism spectrum. “It was never in my mind,” Demo tells Variety. “Never was it ever mentioned on this project [that we would consider] actors who do not have autism.

Affectionately titled after one of the many bar mitzvah jams that soundtrack the movie, Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” tells a messy love story about 22-year-old Andrew (Raiff), who falls for the older Domino (Dakota Johnson) while babysitting her daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt).

I remember reading through the sides and, for the first time, feeling like it was an audition that I wanted to do,” Burghardt says. “It was so authentic. It was a scene that was about Lola — it wasn’t about her being on the spectrum; it was just about her life and how she was feeling. I’d never seen a script like that where the autistic person was treated as a character rather than something being used to move the plot forward.”

While there are plenty of actors with autism out there, most struggle to find agents and managers to represent them. This is a significant barrier to entry for these performers, but Demo did her best to sidestep it in her casting process by branching out further than normal.

“I really had to dig deep. I reached out to a lot of local theaters in all the major cities, and put out a character breakdown in every region of the United States,” she says. “And schools, and summer camps. And a service called Actors Access, a forum where unrepresented actors can submit themselves for roles.”

Hundreds of submissions came in, from which Demo selected a group of top candidates for Raiff to choose from. Then, they held a series of auditions over Zoom for pandemic-related reasons, though Demo notes that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Burghardt was one of the few candidates who did have representation. A theater group in Los Angeles referred Demo to an agent at KMR Talent who had multiple clients on the spectrum. Burghardt signed with the agency at age 15, after searching for three years.

“I really never thought that I was going to find anyone willing to represent me because I’m on the spectrum and I’m very open about it,” she says. “But at KMR, they have a diversity department where they work with people who have disabilities and get them opportunities in TV and film.”

But even with an agent, it took a long time for Burghardt to find the right project. “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is her first film role.

“It just felt like a list of stereotypes that they felt they had to check off,” Burghardt says about auditions she’d been on in the past. “The character was made up of traits, not a personality. It was like all these things that they think, from a neurotypical perspective, that an autistic person might look like, but it had nothing to do with who they were. They were always just being used to serve someone else.”

Once Demo and Raiff spent some time with Burghardt, the choice was easy.

“Vanessa just kind of was Lola,” Demo says. “It’s funny to say. But Cooper’s script was so honest. Lola is a person who says how it is. For better or worse, she’ll always tell you the truth. And that’s who Vanessa is. The marriage of who she is innately and the character just worked beautifully.”

Burghardt felt the same: “There’s one thing I talked about [as Lola], that I like the company of an empty room. That I get drained socially. I really relate to that. I love socializing with people, but it is a lot when you feel like you need to pick up on things that I don’t, naturally.”

Raiff then began to further shape the role around Burghardt, subtly trying to make sure Lola felt honest to her.

In one of the re-written scenes, Lola is bullied into leaving the bar mitzvah by a boy (Eamonn McElfresh), referred to as Little Prick in the film’s credits. Originally, Little Prick was supposed to tell her she’s unwelcome because she’s autistic, but in the final cut, his meanness is more subtle and biting. Instead of starting from that point, he picks on her for being 16 at a party full of 13-year-olds, to which Andrew responds, “You feeling a little bit insecure because she’s taller than you?” The kid shoots back, “She’s only taller than me ‘cause she’s autistic and got held back three years,” before his parents swoop in to defend him. It’s just as cruel, but without Lola present to hear what he said, the scene reveals more about how Little Prick thinks as well as how he gets away with it.

Things have opened up for Burghardt since “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” but only slightly.

“I’ve been getting more auditions recently. None of them have been quite right but there have definitely been more,” she says. “l don’t really think the industry is where they need to be [in terms of] representation, but I do think they’re getting closer. There’s a couple shows out right now, and I think it’s good that they cast them authentically, but they don’t really speak to me. They’re more about autism than they are about the people. But there is a reality show that I love called ‘Love on the Spectrum’ that does a really good job of just letting the cast be themselves.”

“People think that since I’m on the spectrum, it defines me and everything I am. So if it’s a neurotypical role, even though it’s not explicitly stated that it’s neurotypical, they can’t have someone on the spectrum,” she says. “It’s just a trait of mine. It’s not my whole personality, and it doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of playing roles that you didn’t necessarily see as autistic.”

Demo will hopefully be a part of that change: “I’m ready to go. I have so many people I would love to put in things who came close [to playing Lola]. They were really talented and don’t have that exposure.”

“There’s just so many talented actors who have autism,” Demo continues. “You just have to do the work to find them.”