Woman who aided accessibility on Wicked 'honoured'

A woman said she had been "overwhelmed" by the amount of support she had received for her work as an accessibility co-ordinator on the movie Wicked.

Chantelle Nassari, who uses a wheelchair, was headhunted to work on Hollywood's take of the Broadway musical.

The 53-year-old from St Albans, Hertfordshire, said she fell in love with the production after her job interview, but admitted: "I got submerged in it without any context of the enormity of what I had just accepted."

Wicked, directed by Jonathan Murray Chu, first hit cinema screens in November and has since made about £520m worldwide.

Miss Nassari's role involved looking at the set while it was being built to assess any obstacles and make sure entrances and exits were accessible for people with disabilities.

"There was a lot of stuff involved, but it comes naturally to me - I look at that stuff and I scan an area and I can just adapt it," she told BBC Three Counties.

The two-and-a-half hour film stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey and Michelle Yeoh.

Munchkinland was created in the Buckinghamshire countryside close to Ivinghoe.

Throughout filming, Miss Nassari worked closely with Marissa Bode, who played Nessarose in the film.

"She is so lovely, such a sweetheart, she came here not knowing anyone - this is her first big movie.

"But coming to England at her age on her own and being disabled, it was quite epic - my mother instincts kicked in, I think."

She added: "I've actually been really overwhelmed by the response I've had since the movie was premiered.

"I have been inundated with people contacting me from all over the world just interested in what this means and how they can do this with whatever production they're working on, or training opportunities.

"It's been amazing and I feel really honoured that people are contacting me and listening and interested. I've been asked to do some training for people in America.

"I think it has also woken up the industry to how important it [accessibility] is, because it is not just the actors that needed things adapted to or needed somebody who needed to hear them."

Miss Nassari has been championing inclusivity since she was a teenager, when she said she became the nation's first person to get a dance GCSE as a wheelchair user.

She said: "I was the first year of GCSE and dance was one of the options that came up at my school and I wanted to take it, and I think I am that person - that if you tell me I can't, generally I want to do it more.

"So I insisted - there was just no way I wasn't going to be doing GCSE dance, so as the course went on, a lot of the criteria was about leaps that I was not physically able to do."

The syllabus was then adapted to make it more inclusive, she added.

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