The Assembly (Canadian TV series)
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The Assembly is a Canadian television documentary interview series, which premiered in 2025 on CBC Television.[1]
Produced by Small Army Entertainment and based on the French television series Les Rencontres du Papotin,[1] the series features a panel of interviewers on the autism spectrum interviewing celebrity guests.[2]
Interview guests in the six-episode first season were Howie Mandel, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Jann Arden, Allan Hawco, Arlene Dickinson and Russell Peters.[3] Revelations broadcast in the series included Arden discussing her battle with alcoholism, Mandel talking about how his life was improved when he publicly opened up about his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Dickinson sharing that despite her success on television and in business she is still an introverted person who struggles with insecurity, and Peters talking about the difficult relationship he had with his mother growing up.[4] Dickinson later stated that "it was the most moving experience I've had in terms of really being able to connect with people in a different way. There are no barriers or guardrails in place in terms of what they asked, but also the questions truly came from a place of deep interest."[2]
Interviewers
Two of the non-speaking autistic interviewers on the show, Luke Verhoeff and Damon Kirsebom, were depicted being subjected to facilitated communication to pose questions to the interviewees.[5] This form of communication is not considered to be a valid form of augmentative or alternative communication by Speech-Language and Audiology Canada (SAC), with SAC finding that it exposes people with communication disorders to risk of harm by preventing genuine self-expression.[6]
