Steve Way on Finding Love and Vulnerability in Furious

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For Steve Way, stepping into Furious came with an unusual kind of pressure. There was no audition and no need to convince the creative team that he could play Alden as creator & showrunner Liz Meriwether had already seen what she needed.

After hearing Way speak about his experiences in the entertainment industry during a SAG-AFTRA panel, Meriwether developed the character specifically with him in mind. It was an opportunity Way found both exciting and intimidating.

“I didn’t audition,” Way recalls. “It was like, here’s Steve, play this guy, which is terrifying because I have to live up to this version of myself that I have to tap into.”

Known largely for comedy throughout his career, Way was also entering unfamiliar territory. Furious allowed him to bring his comedic instincts to Alden, but within a story that asks far more of him dramatically.

“I’ve been doing comedy almost 16 years. This isn’t a comedy,” he says. Having the freedom to find humor within the character helped put him at ease, while conversations and table reads with Meriwether helped him understand the show's heightened emotional world. “At the end of the day, I’ve learned so much and it was so special.”

At the center of Alden’s story is his relationship with Vanessa whose real identity is eventually revealed to him to be Catherine. She is his caregiver, but Way was particularly drawn to the fact that Furious refuses to portray their relationship as one in which care flows in only one direction.

“The caregiving relationship that we see between Vanessa and Alden is so special because it goes both ways,” Way explains. “We see each other for who we are. We don’t judge each other.”

For Way, a disabled performer, that distinction was particularly meaningful. He has seen plenty of stories in which a disabled character exists primarily as a recipient of somebody else’s care. Alden instead provides Catherine with something she desperately needs herself: safety, affection and a place where she can be vulnerable.

“I’ll give her care by loving her, by helping her, by giving her a safe space,” Way says. “That’s how you build trust between a caregiver and a recipient of care.”

As he puts it, “The only way a healthy, respectful caregiver relationship works is if it’s a two-way street.”
That authenticity extends to Alden’s romantic life. When he prepares to ask Vanessa to be his girlfriend, another caregiver helps him get ready and orchestrate the moment. For Way, there was nothing unusual about that scenario.

“That’s real life,” he says, recalling the times friends have helped him shower, dress and travel to dates. “Disabled people don’t go into that alone.”

The logistics may require assistance, but the emotions — anticipation, vulnerability, excitement and fear of rejection — are universal. “The stakes are higher, but we still prep for it,” Way says. Caregivers, he adds, ultimately become “our hands to do the things we can’t physically do for ourselves.”

Alden’s relationship with Catherine becomes increasingly complicated as both characters reveal truths they have been withholding. For Alden, that includes learning that his heart is functioning at roughly 25 percent and confronting the possibility that his life could be significantly shorter than he hoped. Way connected Alden’s reluctance to immediately share that information with a larger cultural message disabled people are often forced to contend with.

“Society has told many lies about us,” he says, “and one of the biggest lies is that we’re not worthy of love.”

Eventually, however, their relationship demands the same honesty from him that he expects from her. “Just as he wants the truth from her, he knows that she deserves the truth from him,” Way says. “The honesty, the vulnerability, and the openness, they all have to go both ways.”

That idea is tested even further when Alden discovers that Vanessa is not Catherine’s real name and begins to understand the trauma behind the identity she has constructed. Way describes the discovery as “a roller coaster,” with Alden initially hurt that someone with whom he has shared so much could not confide in him. But understanding the context changes his reaction.

“There’s a lot of nuance where there’s a lot beneath the surface,” he says. “I think my character is a little hurt that she cannot confide in me. But also, I get it. I understand.”

The emotional stakes escalate dramatically when Alden witnesses Catherine’s violence.

“That was a level of fear I’ve never discovered on camera,” Way says of filming the sequence. Yet he ultimately saw Alden’s reaction as something more complicated than simply being afraid of Catherine.

“I think the fear was more heartbreak.”

That emotional complexity continues into Episode 6, when Alden is forced to confront what could happen to Catherine as authorities close in. Despite what he has witnessed, his understanding of her remains rooted in everything he knows about her past.

“At the end of the day, I know she’s a victim and I love her,” Way says. “I just want her to be protected.”

For Alden, the situation cannot be reduced to a simple question of guilt or innocence. “It’s not black or white,” Way says. “You have to understand the why.”

That protectiveness also gives Way some of his funniest material in the series. As federal agents attempt to extract information from Alden, he repeatedly stalls, distracts and frustrates them, using their own assumptions and systems against them.

“It was really fun to watch someone as physically vulnerable as I am, someone who doesn’t have a lot of agency, completely mess around with people with power,” Way says. His approach was to ask: “How do I play their game, but do it better?”

Meriwether gave Way considerable freedom to improvise, while the directors and camera operators collaborated with him to incorporate his wheelchair into the physical comedy. The result does more than create laughs. The agents struggle with procedures that were never designed with somebody like Alden in mind, and Alden exploits that inadequacy to his advantage.

For Way, it represents something rarely afforded to disabled characters on screen.

“That’s the power of disability,” he says. “And I love that I get to show that off.”

For Way, Furious ultimately became an opportunity to demonstrate a much wider range than audiences have previously been able to see from him.

“It was the wide range of emotions,” he says of what made the project so meaningful. “So many emotions I’ve never portrayed before, and it was challenging.”

And beyond his own future, Way sees the performance as part of something bigger.

“My biggest motivating factor was the future,” he says. “The future for myself and other disabled performers to show that we’re good enough, if not better.”

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