Daryl Mitchell stars as Stich in Shifting Gears, a wheelchair-assisted mechanic at the show's central auto show.
The new ABC comedy stars Tim Allen as a middle-aged widower who takes in his daughter and her kids and is forced to reconcile with a part of his family he thought he had left behind.
Allen leads the Shifting Gears cast but is joined by some A-list talent, including Kat Dennings (who recently made her hilarious return to the MCU in What If...? Season 3).
Is Daryl Mitchell in a Wheelchair in Real Life?
In Shifting Gears Episode 1, fans were introduced to Daryl Mitchell's Stitch as a member of the show's central bunch of classic car mechanics (led by Tim Allen's Matt Parker).
Mitchell's character in the ABC comedy was shown early in the series, along with Seann William Scott's Gabriel, as one of Matt's joking employees at his automotive restoration business.
When Matt's daughter Riley (played by Kat Dennings) suddenly appears at Matt's door one day with her kids, the curmudgeonly auto shop owner is forced back into father mode, something Stitch and Gabriel give their boss a good ribbing over.
Something immediately apparent with Mitchell's Stitch is his use of a wheelchair. The character being wheelchair-assisted led many to wonder if Mitchell, too, is a wheelchair user.
As it turns out, yes, the Shifting Gears actor uses a wheelchair daily. This differs from a show like NCIS, which in the last year included a character using a wheelchair whose actor did not in real life.
The rapper-turned-TV-star was involved in a devastating motorcycle accident on November 10, 2001, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and requiring the use of a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
In a 2003 profile of the actor, The Herald-Times described Mitchell's accident, recounting his motorcycle trip in South Carolina.
"Mitchell was riding a motorcycle on a pitch-black night when he spun out on a patch of gravel," causing the bike to flip over the Shifting Gears star, leading to permanent damage to his spinal cord:
"While on a trip to South Carolina in November 2001, Mitchell was riding a motorcycle on a pitch-black night when he spun out on a patch of gravel. The bike flipped over and landed on top of him, damaging his spinal cord. Mitchell passed out.Fortunately, someone witnessed the accident and help arrived quickly. When he woke up in the hospital and couldn't move, he thought it was because he'd been sedated. The awful truth of his injuries quickly became clear."
Over the years, Mitchell has been public about living with his disability, not letting it stop him from pursuing his passions. Speaking with IndieWire in 2021, the actor talked about being back on national TV months after the accident on the hit comedy ED:
"I sat down to meet with the producers; they were nervous to even meet with me because they were like, ‘What are we gonna say to him? I just started explaining some of the funny things that have happened to me since I was in a chair [and] it was like ‘Man, you got the job.'"
Mitchell posited that he feels off talking about being disabled: "Man, you ain’t been disabled long enough to be the speaker" but knows he can use his platform for good:
"A lot of times when I speak on behalf of the disabled community it’s like I’m feeling, 'Man, you ain’t been disabled long enough to be the speaker.'"
He remembered an instance where he stood up for himself in an audition after his accident, telling the producers "to come downstairs" if they wanted to meet him.
While he did not get the job, he "set a precedent," knowing in his mind that if production was willing to pass on a talented actor just because they were in a wheelchair, that was not a project he would have wanted to be involved with in the first place.
Shifting Gears continues on ABC, with new episodes debuting every Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET before streaming on Hulu the next day.
