Inevitable Foundation Announces 2025 Accelerate Fellowship Cohort

The five fellows will join the foundation’s existing community of over 100 disabled writers and filmmakers.

From left Chris and Charlie Frazier, Anna Thorup, Josh Flanagan and Zach Anner.

By Inevitable Foundation Staff

Anna Thorup, Chris and Charlie Frazier, as well as Zach Anner and Josh Flanagan have been selected as the recipients of Inevitable Foundation’s 2025 Accelerate Fellowship.

The six-month granting program, which is supported in part by Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity, provides experienced disabled writers with $40,000 in financial support, alongside healthcare coverage and the mentorship, networking opportunities, and community necessary to become industry-leading creators.

"We are thrilled to welcome Anna Thorup, Chris and Charlie Frazier, as well as Zach Anner and Josh Flanagan into our latest iteration of the Accelerate Fellowship, which we've redesigned to offer fellows in-depth support across a six-month rewriting sprint,” said Richie Siegel and Marisa Torelli-Pedevska, Inevitable Foundation co-founders. “In an industry where careers are built project-by-project, the fellowship is uniquely positioning disabled writers to develop and bring their next one to market — alongside the transformational financial and healthcare-related support that has been the core of the program since its founding." 

Featuring two pairs of writing partners in the Fraziers, and Anner and Flanagan, the 2025 cohort marks the greatest number of creatives supported by the program within a single year since Accelerate’s inception. The five fellows will join a community of over 100 disabled writers and filmmakers, which the foundation has invested more than $1 million in since 2021.

Below, learn more about the newest Accelerate fellows, including why they share the foundation’s mission and vision, and how they want to help transform the entertainment industry as disabled creatives.

Image Credit: Stephanie Girard

Anna Thorup’s (she/her) relationship entertainment began as a teen when a Make-A-Wish trip took her to the set of the NBC hit comedy The Office. A graduate of Emerson College, Thorup has worked in a variety of support staff positions at studios, including DreamWorks Animation and Netflix. She also served as a Writer’s Assistant on Apple TV+’s Best Foot Forward before shifting to screenwriting full-time. Thorup has sold two half-hour pilots to ABC and has written animated shows for Netflix, Nickelodeon, Apple TV+, and PBS. She is repped by Sydney Blanke and Antoni Kaczmarek at Sugar23, and Stephen Breimer at Brecheen Feldman Breimer Silver & Thompson.

For Thorup, joining the Inevitable community as an Accelerate Fellow means going beyond the industry’s standard concession of entry-level mentorship and training, and working with an organization and community ready to address the real working realities of disabled creatives. “I feel that Inevitable truly understands how expensive it is to live as a disabled person — particularly, a disabled creative — and works to bridge the gap during the leaner months so that disabled writers and directors can remain in L.A. and working,” she said. “Being accepted into this program is a huge sigh of relief. It grants me the freedom and flexibility to explore ideas without panicking about how I might pay rent or bills.”

Image Credit: Chris Frazier

Chris (he/him) and Charlie (he/him) Frazier graduated from Chapman University and the University of North Carolina, respectively, before launching a now decade-long film and television career. The Boston (Chris) and Chapel-Hill (Charlie) based writing duo initially broke through in TV after selling their series Flinch to USA Network. In the years since, the Fraziers have developed both TV and features with Warner Bros., Fox, Sony, and MGM, among other studios and platforms. Repped by Josh Adler at Circle Management + Productions, their script Untethered was recently honored by the Austin Film Festival for Best Comedy Pilot. 

Creatively, the sibling team — who count Dan Fogelman, Quinta Brunson, Phil Lord & Chris Miller, and Bill Lawrence among their influences — focus on stories that feature characters with disabilities, and that are rooted in their own experiences with Cystic Fibrosis. Those stories aim to balance hopefulness and being “grounded in the messiness of our humanity,” they say. “Our creative mission is to tell stories that center disabled characters as complex, funny, flawed, and fully human — without making disability the whole plot. We want to normalize disability on screen by weaving it into every genre, from comedy to thriller to period drama.”

With the Accelerate Fellowship, the Fraziers say they can further a shared creative mission with Inevitable Foundation, which includes “championing authentic, writer-led storytelling that doesn’t flatten disability into inspiration. It’s not just about visibility — it’s about dimensionality,” they share. “[Inevitable] doesn’t treat disability as a box to check. It sees it as a creative asset. As writers with Cystic Fibrosis, we’ve spent years hiding that part of ourselves. Inevitable’s approach feels like permission to lead with it.”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Subjects

For friends and long-time collaborators Zach Anner (he/him) and Josh Flanagan (he/him), there are three keys to great disability representation. It “fuels stories that everyone wants to see, challenges audiences in unexpected ways, and creates characters that audiences don't just empathize with, but want to be.” The last note is rarely depicted on screen, but the writing team believes it's possible if we “see great representation not just across prestige dramas once every five years, but populate all types of cinema and TV.”

It’s also possible if more disabled writers become permanent fixtures within the industry, a possibility the duo says Inevitable Foundation supports through its Accelerate Fellowship. “Both of us have been relatively lucky and privileged in our careers, but there's a myth that if the door is open once, it stays open. The truth is that being disabled is incredibly expensive, no period between jobs is ever easy, and with each new project, you're not only having to prove you belong but also fight for your right to be considered all over again,” the duo, who met at the University of Texas in 2005, says. “We think the Inevitable Foundation is the one organization that can actually blow the doors off and rather than say, ‘Thanks for letting us in,’ we'll get to say, ‘We're here and this is our space.’"

A comedian, author, and content creator, Anner’s past credits include ABC’s Speechless and Apple TV+’s Best Foot Forward, both honored by the Sentinel Awards for Outstanding Depictions of Characters with Disabilities. A disabled infantry combat veteran, Flanagan’s credits include the sci-fi drama series Day 5, historical western series Elkhorn, head writer of PBS’ How Are We Today? and his directorial debut, the indie pickleball mockumentary Pickleheads.