Dinosaur is a comedy on BBC3 and BBCIplayer starring Ashley Storrie as an autistic woman whose life is thrown into turmoil. Ashley, who is autistic herself and co-created the series with writer Matilda Curtis, plays Nina who loves living with her sister and best friend Evie, played by Kat Ronney. But then Evie has a whirlwind romance and gets engaged, making Nina her maid of honour. Nina’s life is thrown into a tailspin as she grapples with her sister’s impulsive decision and what that means for her own life, not least that she needs to find a date for the wedding.
“Playing Nina was probably the most liberating thing that’s ever happened in my entire life,” says Ashley. “A big part of my autism is ‘masking’ but Nina just kind of wears it out there. That’s what I loved about her. When you’ve got autism, you spend so much time trying to hide it, which just takes up so much energy. So, being Nina has made me realise that I should just be me and spend less time trying to make everybody feel more comfortable around my weirdness. She’s not diagnosed so she doesn’t know that it’s something she has to be hiding – it’s something about her that just ‘is’. It was a very liberating, wonderful experience.”
